Truth Hurts
by Jack Brocket
Summary: The Lightman office is bombed. While professionals scurry around figuring out who dunnit, six employees are trapped in the bowels of the ruin. And then the stakes rise. Last chap up.
1. Truth Hurts

**Second Lie To Me fic, much longer this time around if I have any say. If I get feedback for it I'll take it further. Actually I'll probably take it further regardless, because I'm like that, but reviews are really nice.**

**So, the warnings: Callian, Cal abuse, maybe M, not sure. Also, the story isn't linear most of the time so it might get confusing. I was trying it out, experiment-like; just ask if you need clarification.**

**Standard disclaimer, etc.**

**~W**

**CHAPTER ONE**

_[Washington Post, Thursday, morning edition]_

_THE TRUTH HURTS_

_DC's Lightman Group was barraged late Tuesday night in what specialists believe, but do not confirm, to be a terrorist attack. 'There's no doubt now that it was an intentional bombing,' states specialist Kurt Marx, 'but not necessarily by terrorists. The Lightman Group has enemies, as anyone in the right circles knows; it could have been one of any number of individuals or parties.'_

_Because of the hour, the majority of the Group's employees were not in the building at the time of the bombing; only six persons were unaccounted for. Rescue teams started the search for the missing souls at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night, the instant the site was declared safe to ingress. As of last night four of the six have been recovered; two currently unidentified bodies and two survivors._

_Christopher Dudek, aged 38, and Ria Torres, aged 24, were found at 5:18 yesterday morning, having been trapped in the building for just under 5 hours. Both sustained only minor injuries. 'We were in the elevator,' recalls Dudek, 'I remember the lift sort of shook, and then something snapped and it fell. Ria [Torres] got knocked out and I tried to call for help but the button didn't work and the lights didn't work. I couldn't see anything or hear anything. It was hell.'_

_The Lightman Group, a privately owned consulting company, was established by Gillian Foster and its namesake, Cal Lightman, and deals in deception. The Group accepts assignments from third parties (commonly local and federal law enforcement), and assists in investigations, reaching the truth through applied psychology: interpreting microexpressions, through the Facial Action Coding System, and body language. 'This,' says an informant within the FBI, 'is probably why the building was attacked. Cal Lightman locks up a lot of bad guys, and the rest of the bad guys don't like that.'_

_Lightman himself, along with employee Andrew Black, 35, is still unaccounted for. Insiders confirm that he was in the building when the bomb hit; he has been trapped for over twelve hours. Search teams continue the desperate hunt, but their hopes fade with every hour. 'If these two [Lightman and Black] were injured at any time during the initial blast,' says Mary Lance, one half of a canine/handler team, 'there's a high chance that they're not getting medical attention for critical injuries, and the longer it takes to find them the higher the odds get that those injuries become lethal, if they aren't already.'_

_DC stands by as the US&R perseveres, watching and praying._

Gillian Foster stared at her morning paper without seeing it. She was sitting at her kitchen table in the same clothes she'd worn yesterday, her hair unkempt and her make-up undone. The bright morning sun spilled across the paper like it was trying to cheer her up, dust motes dancing happily within, but she didn't see it. She didn't see anything.

_Because of the hour, the majority of the Group's employees were not in the building. _

Loker and Torres had been off on a case, interviewing some rich lawyer's wife to see if she was cheating on him. It was one of those cases they took purely to pay the bills, and Cal had thought it would be a good opportunity for their fledgling lie detectors to get some solo experience. Cal was catching up with paperwork, taking advantage of the relatively slow day, and had waved her off when she asked if he wanted a hand.

'If you do it, then I'll be bored,' he'd said, 'and we both know I'm insufferable when I'm bored.'

'Okay. You won't mind if I head out, then.'

'Got a date?' Cal had asked her with a straight face. Gillian had smiled and flipped her hair and taken her coat.

'Call me if you need me.' She'd felt Cal's gaze on her as she left the building. She didn't have a date. But every once in a while it was fun to tease him. It would give him something to think about, keep him from getting too stir-crazy.

She'd gone home. Had dinner - leftover chicken and salad - and settled down with a new romance she'd been dying to read.

That had been at seven thirty. Loker called her at ten. She'd ignored the phone at first, annoyed at the interruption; she was just getting to the really good part. But then she sighed and picked it up.

Sirens assaulted her ear immediately, and the sounds of people shouting, and something else, something like static but not. Panic had clenched around her stomach before Loker even said a word.

'Gillian.' That was all he said. He sounded close to hysterical, and she could almost see him standing there with wide eyes, his mouth working furiously to get something more out.

'Where are you?' She'd taken control instantly, leaping up and pulling on the jeans she'd worn that day.

'The - the office.' He'd managed. 'Gillian, it's - it's been bombed.'

Fire. That was the static. Gillian froze as the panic spread through her like a cancer. But she forced herself to move, grabbing her keys and sprinting out the door.

'I'm coming, Loker.' She'd said, and hung up.

Loker was waiting for her when she got there. He was the only person standing still amid a chaos of running, shouting people and blaring sirens and dust. Dust - it was everywhere, blanketing everything like smoke, like morning mist, except that it stank like concrete and stuck in her throat.

He'd looked utterly lost, standing there, staring up at the dark predawn sky where the familiar building used to loom, the dust making his dark hair grey. She'd thrown her arms around him and he'd clutched at her like she was the only rock in a thundering river.

'Where's Cal? Torres?' She asked instantly. Loker, looking dazed, could only point. Toward the building.

'Ria was - checking in…'

Gillian shook her head. For a long second nothing at all crossed her mind. 'Oh, God.' She croaked. 'Oh, God.'

The two of them stood there for a very long time. The sirens continued to howl and the people continued to run and the dust continued to drift, and they were the only two things that were absolutely still.

She didn't know why she was looking at the paper. She didn't even know how the paper had come to be in her hands at the kitchen table; she didn't remember going to the door to get it. All she could think of were her colleagues, her friends, trapped in a building that had been blown up. Images flashed through her mind, images where Cal and Ria were bloodied, injured, confused, dead. _Dead dead dead dead. _Her brain continued to throw the word at her, _could be dead, probably dead_, and she sat there and tried to rebel but her but it just kept right on coming.

She broke into tears.

At four thirty she'd gone back to the office. Drifted that way naturally, with nowhere else to go. She'd showered mechanically since coming home at one in the morning. She'd changed her clothes and brushed her hair and forgotten to eat, and at some point between all that some part of her must have decided to go back because she grabbed her keys and left again. She hadn't even thought of her bed.

There were less people now, but still a lot. She found a guy who looked authoritative and he told her what was going on; there were six missing persons still in the building, and the US&R teams, the Urban Search and Rescue teams, were trying to sniff them out. Gillian asked which six, and he told her.

Andrew Black

Christopher Dudek

Martin Phelps

Eden Roy

Ria Torres

Cal Lightman

She knew all those names. Andrew and Christopher and Martin and Eden, she'd hired them herself, had checked their backgrounds, talked to them sometimes. Now they were trapped, possibly injured, possibly dead.

Ria Torres. Cal Lightman. Possibly injured, possibly dead.

He let her stay. Jared Chase, her temporary rock. Like the night before, she was the only stationary thing in a swarm, a fray, a mosh pit. The only person without a job to do, the only one without some way to help. But she stayed anyway. She had nowhere else to go.

She was there when they found the first two. A dog started barking and its handler started yelling, and before she knew what she was doing Gillian was up and sprinting toward them. She had to stand back while more people moved great blocks of cement and twisted steel and prised two bodies from the wreckage, but as they were loaded onto gurneys and rushed toward waiting ambulances she seized her opportunity.

Christopher Dudek lay prone in his gurney, head held rigid by a neck brace. There was blood drying at his temple and he was crying outright with relief. Gillian found herself crying too as she kissed his hand - alive! Hope! - and moved to the other gurney.

Ria. She was sitting up on her gurney, looking like a ghost for all the dust and completely unscathed but for scattered cuts and bruises. When she spotted Gillian, she too burst into tears, and the two of them hugged so tightly they might have cracked some ribs. The US&R medic looked on disapprovingly.

'Cal?' Gillian asked. Ria's face went through several emotions in quick succession: fear, grief, guilt, shame.

'I don't know. He wasn't in his office when I went up to check in, so I… I left. I was in the elevator when… I don't know where he is.'

She looked like she was about to start crying again, but Gillian took up the mother role instinctively, hushing her and hugging her and stroking her hair and telling her it was okay, it would be okay.

'Miss, I have to check her over.' Said the medic. Gillian let him have at it, but hovered, focussing very hard on Ria and not thinking about anything else at all.

When the medic let Ria go, Gillian started to dial Loker's cell. On the second digit she froze, snapped the phone shut and dialled a different number. Ria gave her a puzzled look, probably seeing the distorted emotion on her face, but Gillian said nothing. She held the cell to her ear and didn't breath. _He might not answer, he probably won't answer, probably no reception, this is ridiculous, why am I even trying _- her thoughts raced on as the phone rang once. Twice. Three times.

'…Gillian.'

She nearly sank to her knees with the force of her relief. 'Cal! Cal, where are you?'

'I… don't know.' His words were slow, muddled, like it cost him to get them out. 'I can't… remember… no clues, everything's wrecked…'

Gillian felt the muscles in her face contort into an expression akin to pain. Ria took her arm to steady her as she swayed. 'Cal, how badly are you hurt?'

'I can't - agh, my head… I just got… knocked out, Gill, I'm --'

'If you say you're fine, I swear to God, Cal.' Gillian barked, so spent by hours of extreme emotion that she thought she might keel over at any second. Ria stared at her, alarmed. Cal's breathing was unsteady in her ear; she wondered, in her brief moment of angry detachment, if he had the strength to lie.

'I'm… burned pretty bad, Gill.'

Gillian put a hand over her mouth. Burned. Burned badly enough to have difficulty breathing, badly enough to tell the truth.

'Cal… Cal, listen to me. Is there any way you could tell me where you are? Any way you could signal us?'

'I don't… how?'

Her mind stumbled for an answer, tripping over her fear.

'Wait… Gillian, how much of the… building's gone?'

'All of it, Cal.' She said hollowly, but recognised something in his voice, even though his words were slow and laboured. 'The whole building collapsed.'

'The bomb… was very close. Wherever it went off, it… took out the whole building's… supports. Wherever those supports are, Gill, that's… that's where I am. Blueprints. Tell the s--' He broke off.

'Cal?' Gillian's breath caught in her throat. 'Cal!'

Abruptly he let out a strangled cry, muffled, like he was trying to keep it from her. The sound sent chills down her spine. 'I'll be fine, Gillian.' He was panting now. 'Just… blueprints… Tell them blueprints.'

'Cal --'

'Gillian… I love you. Okay? I love you --'

The scream cut off as the line died.

So now it was six in the morning on a Thursday, and she was staring blankly at a newspaper that took what had happened on Tuesday - her second home, her real home, crashing down like so much dust; her friends, trapped, missing; finding Ria; calling Cal; _'I love you.' _- and shredded it down to a few choice sentences with a picture of the rescue effort and a quaint little title.

'I love you,' he'd said. She couldn't get it out of her head. The words played over and over, as though on a loop, as though sounding scratchily from some broken record and she listened over and over again to the minute details of his voice. 'I love you,' a slight catch as his breath hitched, 'I love you,' an undertone of tension, which meant pain, 'I love you,' the words hurried, crammed together, like he was seeing something coming - the thing that made him scream.

He was in pain. A lot of it. And there was nothing she could do.

She had tried. She was the one who thought to phone him, she was the one who'd gotten through, she was the one who told Jared Chase to look at the blueprints. She had done all she could. But Cal was still trapped in the bowels of his own damn building, unreachable and hurt, and there wasn't anything more she could do.

She should go visit Torres and Loker. She knew they were together, huddling for warmth after the storm. She knew they wanted her there, were concerned for her, needed her. She could help them. Pulling on a coat, she headed out into the derisively bright day to find them.

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Tuesday, 7:41 p.m.

'Doctor Lightman, there's someone here to see you.'

Lightman looked up from his computer at his receptionist. She was a young girl, new, just started a week ago, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

'_Now_?'

'Not law enforcement, either.' She said, her expression saying, 'the nerve of some people.' He'd forgotten her name. Eden, he thought. An uncommon name. She was catching on. 'He says it's urgent, and he'll "make up for barging in."'

That meant money. Personal case. Lightman looked at his watch - seven forty. He sighed. 'All right, love, show him in.' He closed the file he was working on and logged off. Today had been a slow day; maybe this would be interesting.

The man who walked through the door was a smallish bloke with sandy hair and glasses. By his clothes he might be a young accountant or an intern somewhere, with a red tie that might have been fake silk.

'What can I do for you, then, Mr…?' Cal said.

'Smith.' His voice was soft, almost hesitant. He hadn't wanted to come to a specialist for help; if it was his wife, as these cases often were, he probably wanted like hell to believe she was innocent. But he met Cal's eyes; determined. 'John Smith.'

Warning bell. Glaringly fake name; not about any wife. If this guy knew anything about investigations he knew that his real name would crop up soon enough. Which meant he expected to be here about five minutes, which meant there was no case.

Which meant bad. Cal kept his face cordial, stood up to shake Smith's hand over the desk. 'What can I do for you, John?'

'It's Smith.'

Ooh. That was interesting. Distancing, which meant he probably had something malicious planned for Cal. Cal kept his face calm.

'I want you to tell me if my wife has been cheating on me.'

Which was what Cal had guessed already, but no. No, he didn't. Liar, liar. Cal sat back in his chair. 'Have a seat, Mr Smith.'

'I'd rather stand.'

'All right. Tell me what happened with your wife.'

Smith didn't seem to have planned that far. He put his hand in his pocket and fondled something, eyes searching the floor for something to say. Warning bell. Gun, or knife. Weapon. Cal watched.

'What time is it, Doctor Lightman?' Smith asked suddenly. Cal's eyebrows rose.

'A bit past seven forty.' A flash - anxiety? - Smith hadn't known that.

'What's wrong, Mr. Smith?' He asked lightly. Another flash, this time the same expression a kid wears when someone calls him on a lie - _caught_. Smith immediately closed his expression. As if that worked.

'I got here early. Ten more minutes.'

'Til what?'

'Til - til my dad gets here. He wanted to come with me. For support.' Shrug. Liar, liar. Cal took a moment to think. This guy obviously wasn't here for a wife, he obviously didn't have anything good planned for Cal, and he was obviously waiting for something to happen. Something like what? Seven fifty, what was important about seven fifty?

He decided to take the offensive. Leaning forward on his elbows, Cal looked Smith in the face. 'What are you waiting for, John?'

Smith didn't like Cal's sudden change in posture. He took the smallest of steps back, crossed his arms over his chest. 'It's -'

'No, it's not Smith. It's not John, either, for that matter. What's your real name?'

A flare of panic, before Smith smoothed over. 'It is John.' He didn't ask why Cal would call him on so simple a truth, didn't flash confusion or look at him like he was mad. This sod was very, very bad.

'All right,' Cal said, 'let's say it is John. What are you waiting for, John? What happens at seven fifty? Back-up? A diversion? A bomb?'

A flash. Cal almost sat back with shock - a bomb - but there was no time for that, timing was everything. 'A bomb then. Interesting, John. Where's it planted? Basement?'

Flash. Basement. 'How many, John? Just the one, or is the whole building rigged to come down?' He had his cell phone in his hand beneath the desk, thumb dialling at the speed of light. Smith's face was radiating fear now, Cal was pushing too hard, but he knew he had a time limit now, he needed to get all the information he could in order to pass it on before it was too late.

Flash. The whole building. Smith's expression was gearing on toward terrified now, he knew he was being read somehow but he had no idea how he was giving himself away. Then, a twitch of the lip, a change in the set of the eye. Cal started to duck. Too slow. The gun was raised before he'd hardly moved, and the strangled _pshw_ of a silenced gun sounded.

Cal was jerked back in his chair as the bullet burrowed into his chest. His fist convulsed, clenching around the cell phone in a dead man's grip. Cal's ears rang. For a second he reeled, looking up at the city lights casting a little glow on his ceiling. There was pain building in his chest, but it didn't touch him, not yet; it was waiting for him to make a wrong move before it came crashing down on him.

Smith had gotten behind him, was binding his wrists with what felt like rope. He heard an incredulous laugh as Smith pried his phone from his hold. Smith tied that tie around his face; Cal gagged when the cloth got too tight between his teeth. When Smith was done he came around the desk again and stood on a chair to hold a lighter up to a fire detector. Within seconds the alarms went off, wailing, cracking Cal's skull.

'All right.' Smith said, his timid voice completely changed now. He seized Cal under the arms and pulled him upright. 'Start walking. Fast.'

Cal made it to the car. He fell into the backseat when Smith shoved him, cracking his head on the far door. He let out a grunt around the gag.

'Shut it, idiot.' Snapped Smith as he elbowed Cal's legs in and slammed the door. For a split second the sound of the fire alarms in the Lightman building were muted, distant, like he was in the eye of the storm. He lost consciousness.

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When he woke he was strapped by the ankles to a chair, and his tied wrists were fastened tightly enough that he couldn't move them at all. For a bit he just stayed as he was, giving no outward sign that he'd come round. His chest ached dully, not at all the same searing fire as before. How long had he been here?

There was talking. He could hear talking. A little ways off, two male voices, echoing a little. Hard walls, then, big. It was cold; Cal guessed warehouse. He recognized the two voices. The first one, the lighter one, that was Smith. The second one, he knew that one too, but… he couldn't place it…

'You have to be kidding me, Dallas. The gun was a security blanket, you weren't supposed to use it!'

'I panicked! I'm sorry, Guy, I really am, I didn't mean -'

'All right, shut up. Just shut up. At least you didn't kill him. And gimme that gun.'

Cal heard Guy snatch the gun. All right. Guy and Dallas. That was good. Now he had a lesser disadvantage than he had before. Now if he could just --

'Guy, come on! Dad gave that to m --'

'Dallas!' Dallas shut up.

These guys were pathetic. Now he knew they were brothers. Dallas and Guy, Dallas and Guy. Guy. He knew that name. And he knew that voice. He strained his tired head. Where…

'Doctor Lightman.' It hit him. Guy Ward.

'Doctor Lightman.' The rough tap of metal against the side of his face. Cal swam up from his thoughts. With an effort he raised his head and looked Guy Ward in the face. Yeah, that was him. Looked nothing like his brother, except for the nose. Rounder face, baby face, just like it had been three years ago, except he'd started to go grey around the edges. Premature.

'Remember me, Doctor Lightman?'

'I…' Lightman slurred, letting his gaze flicker. 'Who're you?'

'Yeah, I thought you probably wouldn't. Me, I was just a face in a million, just a little part of one of a million cases. Why should you remember me? Fucker.'

Of course Cal remembered. Ward nearly died in that case, and his partner didn't make it. Cal had been there at the ambush. How could he forget that? But he played stupid. Shook his head painfully.

'Well, all you need to know, Doctor Lightman, is that you killed my best friend. _You_ did, hear me? That's why you're here.'

No, he hadn't. They'd been led into a trap. She'd been shot, critically wounded, died in hospital the next day. They'd never caught up with the ambushers after that -- suddenly Cal understood. When Ward had undergone the grieving process three years ago, when he came to the anger stage, the stage where he needed someone to blame, he'd picked Cal. He hadn't liked Cal, he'd thought he was a fraud, a side show. So it had been no love lost to pick him.

He'd taken grief one step further, though. Now he was taking revenge. Cal let his head fall back onto his chest, tired. He opened his mouth to say something.

That was when the phone rang. Dallas, who had been watching silently, jumped half a foot in the air.

'Are you _joking_?' Guy stood and rounded on his brother.

'It's not mine!' Dallas yelped. 'Look, it's his!'

The phone rang once, twice. Guy chuckled.

'All right.' Guy took the phone and pressed it to Cal's ear. 'Talk to your girlfriend, Doctor Lightman. And remember this, or you're a dead man: you're in the basement.'

Cal looked at him, confused, for a split second, tried to work that through but gave it up and turned his attention to the phone. Foster. His first instinct was to act like he was completely all right, to keep her out of this, but he sort of did want his captors thinking he was a little out of it.

So. He had the presence of mind to recall the building had been bombed, and as far as anyone knew he was still in it, trapped and likely injured.

'…Gillian.'

'Cal!' The sound of her voice, even tinny and mechanized in his ear, was enough to wake him up completely. 'Cal, where are you?'

'I don't know,' he was acting both for his captors and Gillian, now, talking slowly, with spaces between words as if it took a lot to make his voice work. 'I can't remember. No clues here, everything's wrecked.'

He heard Gillian's breathing on the other end. He could almost see the look on her face. Guilt clenched like a rock in his stomach.

'Cal… how badly are you hurt?' As she spoke he felt his focus fading again. He fought to keep his head above water, and it occurred to him that he might be losing a lot of blood.

'I can't - agh, my head,' He hadn't meant to say that. He struggled. Paused and shook his head to clear it. 'I just got knocked out, Gill, I'm --'

''If you say you're fine, I swear to God, Cal.' Her voice was harsh with warning, and in his state it gave him pause. He thought as fast as he could. Lie to her? Yes, of course. No other choice. Injuries? How bad should he make them?

What would account for the state of his voice?

''I'm… burned pretty bad, Gill.' As he said it he made up the lie in his head. Burned enough to have difficulty talking, he would have had to be very close to the bomb. That was good, the bomb was in the basement, and that would be the hardest place to get at, that bought him some time. And if he didn't survive this, at least it wouldn't come as a surprise to her.

He didn't think about the fact that it would also buy Guy time.

'Cal… Cal, listen to me. Is there any way you could tell me where you are? Any way you could signal us?'

No, there bloody well wasn't. Not if he had any say. 'How?' He asked. He waited a moment, listening to the background noise - shouting, barking; search parties - before speaking again. 'Wait,' he said, as though something had just occurred to him. 'Gill, how much of the building is gone?'

'All of it, Cal… the whole building collapsed.' Cal closed his eyes. The whole building. He'd known that already, of course, had gotten it right from Dallas, but…

'The bomb… was very close. Wherever it went of, it took out the whole building's supports. Wherever those supports are, Gill, that's… that's where I am. Blueprints. Tell the s--'

He didn't see the flash of the knife until it sheathed itself in his leg. He bit off his cry of pain before it tore out of him and for a second he reeled with the effort of keeping it in. Sparks took over his eyes, white sparks that danced about like dust in a column of light. He kept his breath, knowing instinctively that if he let it out it would come as a scream. When the sparks began to clear he stared doggedly at the dark smear spreading over his jean leg, trying desperately to keep hold of his thoughts. Keep up the lie. He had to keep up the lie.

'Cal?' Her voice was distant, though he knew she was practically shouting. 'Cal!'

Keep up the lie. Keep up the lie. Cal's breath choked out from between his teeth and he sucked in a new one. Another. 'I'll be fine, Gillian.' He managed. 'Just… blueprints… Tell them blueprints.'

'Cal --' He saw the knife coming this time and cut her off.

'Gillian, I love you. Okay? I love you.' The blade pierced skin again and this time Cal couldn't hold back the strangled noise he made.

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Cal's captor snapped the phone shut. Cal let himself crumple against the metal chair and clenched his eyes shut, gasping. He looked at the ceiling of the warehouse as the searing tendrils of pain slowly dulled to a sharp ache around the blade, which Ward had left this time. His hands ached too now, chafed by their rope when he'd jerked from the impact.

'That,' he panted, 'wasn't necessary.'

'No? I don't think you'd have shut up otherwise.' His captor chuckled amicably. Cal looked at him. He tossed Cal's cell phone up and down, casually. As casually as he'd stuck a knife in Cal's leg.

'But that was fun.' Ward continued. 'I knew I would learn something.'

'Yeah?' Cal asked. He'd regained himself now, voice even and face smooth. 'What'd you learn?'

Ward smiled smugly and seated himself in the chair before Cal. He touched the tip of the dagger embedded in Cal's quadriceps. Cal's breath caught and his focus narrowed for an instant before he forced himself to take in Ward's signs. His lip was saying contempt and his eyes were saying pride and his body was saying triumph. All together: _I'm better than you at your own game. _That was good. Now he thought Cal was both so injured he couldn't think straight _and _just stupid.

'Well,' said Ward with the hint of a drawl. He traced the hilt of the knife but did not apply any force. Cal struggled to ignore it. 'You're taking me seriously; I learned that from the fact that you lied to your partner about your location and condition. You're also afraid; you told her you loved her, which, knowing you, and I do, you never would have done if you believed you were going to make it through the day. Which was wise; you're probably not.' Through the day. That made it morning. The morning after the bombing?

'Oh, yeah? What makes you --' Cal started. Ward's smugness erupted into glee; he twisted the blade in Cal's muscle and wrenched it out. Cal's words drowned in a roar. His vision blurred to red behind the new sparks. Ward watched him in silent pleasure until his traumatized muscles relaxed into a minute trembling and his breathing returned to unsteady gasps.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I couldn't help it. I don't like it when you talk, Doctor Lightman.'

'You talk, then.' Cal spat brashly. 'What do you want with me?'

Ward feigned surprise. Beneath that Cal could read nothing; Ward's guard was up, and he was smooth as glass. 'Nothing at all. I'm done wanting things from you, Doctor Lightman, because that didn't end very well last time I trusted you. Now, I just want to keep you here, and act as the fancy strikes me.'

'Act how?'

'I tell you, I don't know yet.' Ward smiled complacently. 'I have a few choice weapons here, and my creativity. I'll think of something.'

'Will I like it?' Cal asked sarcastically, because Ward wanted him to. Ward's grin was inhuman.

'No. No, I don't think you will. Unless you're a masochist of the most extreme variety.'

'I am, though.' Cal said. 'I love getting beaten up. Gives me a kick. You'll have to torture me with little girls and lollipops.'

'Lollipops, now there's an idea.' Ward flipped the knife, now gleaming red in the half-light, looking thoughtful. 'And little girls? I don't have any at hand, unfortunately. I suppose I can always make one out of you.'

Cal laughed derisively. 'What, chop my tackle off? That the best you can come up with?'

A flash of annoyance. Ward pointed the knife at Cal casually. 'You don't want me to get creative just yet, Doctor Lightman. Don't tempt me.'

'Cal, please.' Cal snorted. 'I get the sense we're going to be best mates soon.'


	2. Truth's Champion Dead

**Much gratitude for all the reviews! This is going to be difficult to live up to, but you know me, I'll do my bloody damnedest. Here is your second chapter. Same rating applies, also same caveats: Non-linear, Callian, Cal abuse. I know Cal's looking rather peaky right about now, but trust me, I know what I'm doing. Sort of. **

**Actually, I lied. I think I should up the rating, 'cause there are some pretty graphic images starting to crop up here and there.**

**Standard disclaimers, etc.**

**~ W**

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_TRUTH'S CHAMPION DEAD_

_The two missing persons of the Lightman Group bombing, Andrew Black and Cal Lightman, have been found. Andrew Black was checked into Sibley Memorial Hospital with critical wounds early yesterday evening, and is now reported to be comatose. He is expected to survive. Cal Lightman was discovered dead_

Gillian stopped reading. Her eyes continued to glide automatically over the black and white, but every word looked the same: _dead._

It had been at exactly eight twenty-three; she'd checked the clock less than a minute before. Loker had called her. She'd learned to hate the sound of her ringtone, had learned to cringe every time it rang.

'Gillian.' He'd said, and she'd heard it, just like she'd heard it the first time he'd called.

'Loker…' She'd practically pleaded.

'Lightman's dead.'

She didn't remember leaving the apartment and driving to the bomb site, but she must have done, because next thing she knew she was sprinting through the US&R people and the police and fire department people. She'd found them, Loker and Torres and even Zoe, who must have wandered there like a homeless cat, all standing there staring at an ambulance. No, not at the ambulance; the gurney next to it.

Strong arms caught her up and held her, but she stared at the white sheet covering something real, something she could touch and know he was dead.

'Oh, God.' Gillian staggered and tried to rip her eyes away. A lone hand had fallen over the edge of the gurney beneath the stark white shroud, a patchy, angry red hand. 'That's not -- that can't be him --' Her stomach convulsed and those arms let her go as she bent over and emptied it.

'I'm sorry, ma'am.' Jared's voice was quiet in her ear. 'It's him. He was wearing dog tags.'

Dog tags. She'd never expected him to wear the dog tags, they were a gag gift. But he had. Dog tags, God, dog tags, he'd worn them. To the end.

He'd been in pyjamas when he opened the door, a black t-shirt and dark slacks and no socks. His hair had been mussed.

'Hello, love.' He'd said, blinking. 'What are you doing here?'

'Late Christmas gift,' she'd said, suddenly embarrassed, brandishing the wine.

'Oh,' he'd said, as though pleasantly surprised. '82, not a bad year. Come on in.'

She remembered that night more clearly that she did the events of, say, this morning, or last night, or the night before. Remembered that the light had been on in the kitchen, remembered the way his voice sounded when he told her Emily was asleep, remembered him fixing tea for the two of them. She'd surprised him with the dog tags, boxed and wrapped up nicely in shiny dark red paper. He'd rolled his eyes at the gaudy silver bow; it had made her laugh.

'SOB?' He'd said, laughingly affronted, on reading the tags. 'Well, thanks very much, darling, I love you too.'

'It's because you were an ass to leave like that.' She'd tried to say it like a joke, but he'd read something in her face and sobered at once. He'd put an arm around her, and when she couldn't keep herself from crying he'd put the other one around her too and held her tight.

'I'm all right, love.' He'd said. 'I'm always all right, don't think on it now. Hear me? Don't think on it now.'

She didn't register when the others had joined her, but she felt it when Torres threw her arms around Gillian. Now, as then, she cried.

'When was the second blast?' Torres asked hollowly, as if more to fill the terrible silence than anything else.

'What?' Jared had backed off a ways, as though to give them space, his hands behind his back and his eyes on the ground. He looked at them now with confusion overlaid with tactful commiseration.

'He screamed.' Gillian told him, wiping her eyes. 'While we were on the phone. And then the line died. If it wasn't - I don't know - a belated fire or something… did something… _fall_ on him?'

'Well, no, ma'am. The body was out in the open, very close to the bomb but not… restricted.'

'But he _screamed_, and the line…'

'I don't know, ma'am, I'm sorry. The burns were extensive, maybe he… I wish I could offer some closure, but he's gone, ma'am. He's dead.'

Gillian was so tired. She wanted so badly to just let it go. But something wasn't right. There was something off. She drifted over to the covered gurney and put a hand on the edge of the sheet. She felt her mind erect a wall between itself and her body, almost as though it wasn't her standing there touching the single thin barrier between her and a dead man, but someone else altogether. She started to lift the corner.

A hand caught her wrist, and she looked up to see Loker. His eyes were terrified, and there were tear tracks on his cheeks, twin tracks that shone in the lights erected all around the site like a stadium. He shook his head.

'Don't look, Eli.' Gillian heard herself say. With her free hand she pulled her other gently free of his grip. She clutched his hand, though, as she touched the sheet again, needing to

feel him there. And then she pulled the white mantle away.

**+-+-+**

What's the time?'

'_Let the lying lips be put to silence._' Guy drawled, not looking over. Ooh, that was interesting. A fixation on the bible, he hadn't expected that. Probably, Ward's hatred of him had something to do with twisted verses as well as his friend's death. He played dumb.

'Wasn't lying, pillock, it wasn't even a statement, --'

Ward, who was sprawled in a big overstuffed La-Z-Boy armchair -- it turned out the warehouse stored furniture -- tossed a sandwich wrapper at him, missing. 'Shut up! If you knew the verse you'd have your answer.'

'Psalms 31:18.' Cal dropped the bomb. Ward stilled, but Cal barged on, 'There's no 31st hour, though, so you switched them, and that's 18:31. Military time, obviously, so it's six thirty o--'

He broke off as Ward stood. The look on his face was… unreadable. Cal got absolutely nothing. Ward strode toward him, picking up a second foldable chair and straddling it three feet from Cal's face.

'Titus 1:2'

'Why --'

'The verse, Lightman!'

'_In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began_ --' Cal rattled off. They might be getting somewhere.

'Romans 3:23.'

'_For all have sinned and fall short of --_'

'John 14:6.'

Cal, who had been slouched against the chair, grunted as he forced himself as far forward as the ropes would let him go and put his face right close to Ward's. Tired but intelligent hazel eyes burned into blue, and in the blue a spark of fear flickered to life.

'I am the way,' Cal breathed, voice scorching. 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.' The slow, deliberate words seemed to echo around the two of them, even after Cal fell silent, seemed to take wing for the rafters like ethereal birds. Ward was tripped up now, and didn't ask for another verse, his eyes were wide and stunned, but Cal trapped Ward's gaze with his own and kept spouting,

'The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.'

'Stop- that's enough --' Cal raised his voice over Ward's protests, keeping their eyes locked;

'For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.'

'I said _stop!_' Ward's chair crashed backward as he leapt up, pulling his brother's gun from its holster. For a split second Cal's words rang in the silence. He stared up at Ward's eyes, ignoring the barrel of the gun. Slowly, he finished:

'Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.'

Ward didn't shoot him when he opened his mouth. He didn't even shoot him when he was done. He didn't seem to be capable of it just that minute. Cal gazed up at him, expressionless, reading.

Ward whirled away and stalked out of view. Cal let himself fall to pieces when the sound of the doors slamming shut drifted to him, his head falling back against the cold metal chair and his muscles shaking minutely. He coughed; he hadn't realised he'd been shouting.

It was a moment before he registered the footsteps, but he didn't look as Dallas pulled a little table over and righted the chair. He heard the clink of glass and liquid pouring, and that got his attention. He pulled his head down to see Dallas setting out a bottle of whiskey and a chipped mug.

'I think I might love you.' Cal said.

'It's not for drinking.' Dallas said coldly, waving a handful of gauze before setting it down and, pulling his chair closer, unbuttoned Cal's ruined shirt.

'You shoot me and then you patch it up?' Cal said incredulously, 'What, are we bonding?'

'Mind your business.' Cal fell silent as Dallas pulled the sticky fabric away from his chest, watching the young man's face. He read him. Dallas dipped some of the gauze into the liquor and started dabbing blood away from Cal's bullet wound. The kid's touch was deft but gentle, and Cal wondered what to make of that.

'It's 'cause he'll kill you if I die before he gets back.' He said finally. Dallas made no response, but his hand paused in its mopping for a split second. Cal smirked, trying to get a rise. Dallas didn't take that well; after a moment he spoke.

'He's out there trying to decide if you're God or not.'

Cal blinked. 'Come again?' Dallas looked at him; his lip pulled in the smallest of smiles. Fondness, thought Cal, as he spoke of his brother.

'My brother's a certified lunatic. He didn't think anyone else on the planet knew as much of the bible as he does, so now he thinks you're Jesus or something.'

'Wasn't like that three years ago,' Cal frowned. That was interesting. There was something in that. Dallas looked at him, hand pausing again, surprised.

'You do remember?' He asked. Cal looked back at him, deciding. Then he nodded.

'I remember everything. The case, the ambush, the… the losses. I remember the way she looked on that gurney as they rushed her away to hospital.'

'D'you remember her name?'

'Grace.' Cal said, seeing her despite himself, reliving the ambush. 'Her name was Grace Hallowell. I saw it, what was between her and your brother. The day we met.'

'What do you mean?' He had the kid's attention now. 'Their friendship?'

Cal shook his head, tired. He let it fall back once more and looked up at the ceiling several metres above them until his eyes closed. 'No, kid. They were in love.'

+-+-+

'Guy, cut it out.'

'What, you can dish it but you can't take it? _To Grace, I thought you might like --_'

'You're just jealous you never get flowers to -- Guy --'

'_A few reasons to be my girl_. Psht, who is this, Paul? Man, you can really tell he's a hopeless romantic, can't you --'

'G_imme my flowers, you big bully --'_

'You think he'd at least have figured out that you don't like roses by now --'

'Yes, I do.' She leapt up on her tip-toes and grabbed the bouquet from him, face red and flustered and a strand of russet hair falling into one brown eye. Guy laughed at her as she peacocked away with her prize. 'Aw, look what you did, Grace, you made a thorn fall off.'

'Good. That thorn's just like you, you old jerk; a thorn in my side.'

'Except I've got better jokes.'

'Better jokes? You couldn't tell a joke if it grabbed you by the balls.'

'Maybe not, but I could tell it if it twisted. _I'd_ be howling, anyway.'

She couldn't help snorting, even though she shook her head. Guy followed her to her desk, putting up his hands in surrender when she rounded on him. At the look on her face he settled into the chair across from it, rather than his usual perch on the corner of the desk. 'So how's it going with Paul?'

'Good.' Grace replied neutrally, making a show of arranging the roses on her desk. Guy looked at her.

'You want to talk about it?'

Grace put her head down. Catching something off in her expression, Guy figured it out: _Thought you might like a few reasons to be my girl_. They'd fought.

'Not really.'

'I'm always here if you do.' Grace looked at him then, almost sad, almost glad. Her smile didn't reach her eyes.

'I know. I think I'd have gone insane by now if you weren't, Guy.'

+-+-+

'Lookee what I got here, Lightman.'

Ward tossed a newspaper at his face. Cal roused with difficulty. When his eyes opened they took some time to start taking in his surroundings. He'd lost track of time. He'd lost track of everything. His head was light, he felt like a bubble-head, what was wrong with his head? He looked at the paper where it had fallen to his lap. He squinted at the ink, but couldn't make out the words, even the big ones at the top.

'I'm sorry, does _Doctor_ Lightman need help to read?' Ward chuckled as he settled into his folding chair. He reached over and took the paper, swiping Cal in the face with it again for fun. Cal hardly reacted.

'Here's what it says, good Doctor. _TRUTH'S CHAMPION DEAD. _Funny title, don't you think? Whoever wrote that obviously didn't know you.

_The last missing persons of the Lightman Group bombing, Andrew Black and Cal Lightman, have been found. Andrew Black was checked into Sibley Memorial Hospital with critical wounds early yesterday evening, and is now reported to be comatose. He is expected to survive. Cal Lightman was discovered dead in the building's basement, fatally close to the remains of one of six bombs planted around the lower level._

Hear that, Cal? Dead! Dead, dead, dead, dead.'

Cal muddled. His expression must have said something, because Ward laughed.

'You really are stupid, aren't you? They found your body, Cal. In the basement of your building. You were burnt so badly that you were unidentifiable, but you had a pair of dog tags around your neck with your name on them, your name and the acronym SOB. I wonder what that stands for, huh?'

Cal's hand jerked in his bonds. When the motion was checked it sent a shock wave through his chest, igniting that aging fire from the bullet wound. He panted, but more with fear than anything else. The tags. The chain, where was the chain, he couldn't feel the chain around his neck.

Ward laughed outright. 'It's not there. Dallas took them, you see, handed them off to be planted on a body already placed in the basement, to be found once you told your girlfriend you were there.'

'Why would you…' Cal breathed, straining. When had Dallas done that? He didn't remember that… He lifted his head to look at Ward, who was grinning openly now. Bloody tosser. Bloody tosser…

'You're no genius, Cal Lightman. They say you are, they sing your praises, but you're a fraud. If you were any kind of intelligent you'd have figured it out the instant I said it: for time. Everyone thinks you're dead, so now we have all the time in the world to play.'

When Cal said nothing, Guy slapped him across the face. Adrenaline started pumping again immediately; Cal's thoughts cleared a little. For a second all he could do was worry about what Guy was going to do, but when his brain was working well enough he realized that wasn't helping and switched tracks.

There was a way out of this. Guy was a lunatic with a penchant for verses; he could use that. Dallas was beginning to be sympathetic, and he was clearer-eyed than his brother; he could use that. Reason with him. Play to his better nature. There was still the cell phone. If he changed the circumstances a bit, he could use that. He was supposed to be dead. Uh… he couldn't use that. Gillian thought he was dead. It was probably killing her. And Torres and Loker --

Guy slapped him again. 'Pay attention, Doctor Lightman. Pay close attention. I've figured out what I want to do with you. You quote the bible like a man of God, but I've done some thinking and I see it now: you're a devil. The devil, I know, can say holy words to lure holy men, and that's what you're doing, and that's a sin. And I'm going to make you wish you hadn't done that.' He tossed the newspaper over his shoulder with a noise like wings, madly flapping wings, and Cal though ridiculously that it was his life, flying up away from him.

Guy stood, and Cal followed his progress without seeing as he crossed the open floor. That was it, he thought, time was up. He'd waited too long, and now he was done for.

'Which do you prefer, Doctor Lightman?' Guy called, words echoing, 'the knife or the gun?'

Cal closed his eyes.

Gunfire cracked, ricocheting off the crates and the ceiling, and Cal leapt against his bonds and looked over at Guy. Cal could see it in his face now; he'd lost him. He was done.

'Answer me, Lightman. Which do you prefer, the little knife or the big gun?'

'The… the gun.'

'Knife it is.' Grinning at his joke, Guy hefted a blade. It glinted sharply as it spun once, and then Guy's hand closed again around the hilt for a split second before he let it fly.

+-+-+

'Now I lay me down to sleep;I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to I should -- if I should -- hang on, what's it?'

'Die, Daddy.' Emily dropped her head onto the pillow, exasperated as only five-year-old girls are capable of being.

'Oh, right. Bloody morbid prayer, this is, why do they want you learning this --'

'Daddy!' Emily shoved him with her little hand.

'Oi, I'm getting to it, don't hit me. If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take, and this I ask for Jesus' sake. Amen. Now go on, you, get up under the covers.'

Obediently Emily scrambled onto the bed from her kneeling position and burrowed under the blankets. Cal got up and crossed to the shelf next to her bed. 'Which light tonight, love?'

'Ummm… the butterfly.'

'Butterfly, flutter-by, butter flutter fly by...' Cal picked up the right one - he thought - and plugged it into the electric socket. Purples and blues and pinks alighted on the surrounding wall in a soft glow. 'There we are.' He moved back to the bed, tucking the comforter up under her chin, and flicking her nose. Planted a kiss on her forehead when she giggled. ''Night, love. First day of Sunday school tomorrow, so sleep tight.'

'Sweet dreams, Daddy.' She called softly as he put out the ceiling light. The butterfly gleamed ethereally and seemed to flicker in a little dance as he closed the door.

+-+-+

Lightman was out of it. He stared blankly at the ceiling again, eyes half closed as Dallas finished up on the last of his wounds. He wrapped it tight and then smeared blood across the surface so the bandage would be invisible once he re-buttoned the ruined shirt. He cleared away the bloody, liqueur-soaked gauze and wiped off the rickety little table.

'Why d'you keep doing that?' He asked, slurring the words like a drunk. Dallas looked at him.

'If he keeps up like this he'll kill you before the night is out.' Dallas said coldly, buttoning the shirt. He put a hand at the back of Lightman's head and pulled it down roughly, flashing a little key-chain torch in each eye and checking his pulse.

'So?' Lightman asked him. Dallas frowned at him. Yeah, so what? He didn't know. But he took the time to think.

'Yours is a human life.' He said finally. 'I don't believe in taking those. Now shut up.' He stood and gathered all the used gauze in his arms.

'What if I die?' Lightman raised his voice a little. 'How'll you feel then?'

'I'll have done what I could.' Dallas answered without turning around and walked away. He stashed his armful in a crate, figuring that by the time anyone found it, it wouldn't matter anymore. He went out to join Guy.

'What are you going to do with him?' Dallas asked. His brother shrugged, leaning against the filthy concrete. He looked almost normal, not at all insane, not at all as though he'd accused a man of being Satan incarnate and tortured him for it for an hour and a half.

'I don't know yet. I'm not done with him, though. I didn't go to all that effort, planting a body and blowing up a building, just to let him go.'

'Why _did_ you do all that?'

'Truly?' Guy grinned. 'Because I could, Dallas. I really just wanted to see how much I could get away with.'

'Innocent people, though? You saw the papers; three dead.'

'Two dead. Lightman's alive. For now.'

'The body we planted is dead.'

'He was already dead when we planted him, he doesn't count.'

'Two, then. That makes us murderers.'

'We blew up the place when there were the least possible people there. If they were still snivelling at their desks long after the business day was over, that's their problem.'

'How can you say that?'

'They work for Lightman. They're not people, just like he's not.'

'He is so.' Dallas didn't know why he said that. He didn't care about some random guy. His brother hated him, so he should too. What was he doing?

Guy looked at him like he'd stabbed him in the back. 'What did you just say?'

'He remembers the case. He told me.'

'He… he didn't tell me.' Guy dropped his gaze to his feet, frowning. Something about the look on his face -- Dallas snapped.

'Well you can stop fucking killing him now, because he remembers everything! The whole fucking case, Guy. He remembers her name and the ambush you never even told _me_ about and how she got carted away on the gurney. He even remembers the way the two of you looked at each other.'

Guy stared at his cigarette while Dallas paced. The icy wind blew in their faces: Dallas's distressed, Guy's blank. Dallas rounded on him again.

'You blame him for her dying. I can see that. But I can't see a guy like him pulling a gun on anybody. Tell me what happened, Guy. Just, please, tell me what happened.'

Guy looked at his younger brother, whose earnest face was chafed in the cold, his emotive hands frozen in that last pleading gesture. Guy nodded slowly.

'The higher-ups had hired Lightman for a case. His job was to figure out if this Mafia boss was lying.'

'Mafia boss?'

'We assumed. We caught a couple of his guys in a murder investigation and followed the trail back to him. When we brought him in he obviously denied everything, but there had been a lot of Mafia-related activity lately and we wanted to pin it on him.'

'Did he do it? All that stuff?'

'I don't know. Don't care. Higher-ups seemed to think so, because they brought Lightman in rather than let him go. I hated Lightman the minute he walked in. Took the place over like it was his, like he was better at our job than we were, telling the guys what to do and how they were doing everything wrong, even though we were doing everything by the book, line by fucking line. And the way he looked at you. Like he knew shit about you. Like he figured he could see right into you. Pissed me right off, the minute I laid eyes on him.'

'What happened with the case?'

'Lightman got in with the Mafia guy and started talking to him. Donato, that's the Mafia guy, he didn't say jack shit for half an hour, just looked at Lightman across the table like the guy was some bug he wanted to step on. I laughed. I kept thinking, "This guy's supposed to be an expert and he's getting even less than we did." Lightman was a fraud, and I was looking at the proof from behind that one-way window.'

'What happened then?'

'I missed it when the tables turned, I'd walked out. I watched the tapes later, though. Lightman was just talking and Donato was just staring, and suddenly Lightman just started answering his own questions. He would ask Donato a question, like 'were those your guys?' and then he'd turn around and answer himself. 'Yeah, they were yours.' Watching the tape I was like, 'What the fuck is he doing?' He looked like a lunatic, like he was just making shit up as he went. But when he came out of there and told the bosses everything he'd found out, they believed him. No questions asked. The bosses sent out a team of us to check out the location Lightman made up. Five of us, six with Lightman.'

'Why would he come with you if he knew you were walking into a trap?'

'I don't know. Maybe he figured the ambushers would recognize him and leave him alone. Looks like they did, too; he got a bullet to the shoulder, but nothing major.'

'What do you mean, recognize him?'

'He was in with the Mafia.'

'He got shot and you think he's in with them?'

'Don't talk to me like that, fucker. He's alive and she's not; that's all the proof I need. He told us everything would be fine, and we got ambushed.'

'Why is that Lightman's fault? Assuming he's not in the Mafia?'

'He'd asked Donato, in the interrogation room, if there was an ambush waiting. Donato was lying when he said no, and Lightman should have seen it. If he was such a fucking expert. But he didn't.'

Dallas knew his brother's face; he saw the uncertainty flash across it. 'You can tell me, Guy.'

Guy looked at him, shoved his hands in his pockets, looked down. 'But… he remembers her. When he was unconscious, the second time, after he'd talked to his girlfriend over the phone, I think he dreamed about that night. The ambush. He kept saying shit, names, like Donato and Ward and… and Hallowell. And the look on his face, when he said her name…' Guy swallowed and pulled out a cigarette. Dallas watched for a second as he tried to light it, but his hands were shaking too hard. Dallas stepped forward and did it for him.

'I don't think he did it, Guy.' He said quietly. Guy dragged hard on his cigarette, his expression torn and lost. Dallas kept talking.

'I don't think he did it, and I think you're torturing - killing - an innocent man. You have to let him go.'

He reached over and put a hand on Guy's shoulder. In a flash Guy had knocked his wrist away, and that lost expression was gone. 'You always were an idiot, Dallas. Here's proof. Like I needed more. We're not letting him go til he's dead.'

Guy turned on his heel and stalked back into the warehouse.

+-+-+

Gillian had called Zoe sometime around ten Friday morning.

'Hello?' Gillian recalled the last time she'd seen Zoe, standing there a little apart from Loker and Torres at the ruined office. The look on her face - stricken, blank.

Gillian had spent hours pacing her living room like a rattled frenetic, agonizing. She knew what she'd seen. Under that sheet. But what about what she'd seen four years ago? Could she trust that memory with Cal's life? It was a pretty sharp memory, one you never forgot, one that stuck and stuck good, but --

'Hello?' Gillian snapped out of it.

'Zoe, it's Gillian.'

Zoe said nothing. Gillian could almost see her, crumpling into a chair, all her substance coated in the concrete dust, defeated and stunned and lacking the ability to deal with anyone, especially her late ex-husband's work partner. But she still had to say it. She opened her mouth, but stopped. Dare she? What if she was wrong? _What if she was wrong?_

'Zoe, do you remember Cal's tattoos?'

The other end cracked with rapt static. Gillian imagined Zoe's face: first surprise, then confusion, then anger.

'What does that have to do with anything, Doctor Foster?'

'I know they found a body, Zoe, but I don't think it's him. There's no tattoo on the left shoulder.'

A sharp intake of breath translated as a rush of white noise. 'It's not him.' Zoe blurted. 'Oh, thank God, it's not him.'

There it was, then. She'd been right. But that opened up so many new possibilities: someone had planted the dog tags on some random body for a reason. Where was Cal? He was in trouble. Kidnapped? Yes, that was certain. But where? Who? Gillian finished up with Zoe, who was nearly sobbing outright with relief, full of purpose and eager to get started.

She had a job again.

**+-+-+**

**Reviews fuel my muse - any takers?**


	3. Truth and Terror

**Firstly, thanks again for all the reviews, and my apologies for the long hiatus. Life **_**en la réalité alternative**_**is riotous at the moment. But here is your new chap - notice it's at least as long as the previous ones, to make up for the wait.**

**Secondly, in answer to a question posted for the last instalment: SOB = son of a bitch. And while I'm at it, MPDC = Washington DC police department, and US&R = Urban Search and Rescue. I think that's all the acronyms thus far; if not just ask. **

**Finally, many thanks to Sidney James TD Lemon 1900 for a critical eye.**

**Standard disclaimers, etc.**

**~W**

**+-+-+**

**TRUTH HURTS**

CHAPTER THREE

.

_[Washington Post, Monday, evening edition]_

_OF TRUTH AND TERROR_

_Investigations into the matter of the culprit are underway, but have been fruitless thus far. 'It's very obviously someone with training,' avers an anonymous source, 'or else they [the perpetrator] wouldn't have been able to pull it off like that. Six bombs, all strategically placed, at just the time when the least possible people were in the building… there's something in that.' _

_Indeed there is. The Washington Post wires have been off the hook with speculations and demands for explanations. 'What sort of terrorist,' said the Vice President in a televised address last night, 'deliberately attacks a building with no people in it? What sort of message are they sending? Those are your questions today, and I answer with this: we are very close to unravelling this awful thing. Whoever took the lives of Cal Lightman and his two employees will see justice. You have my word on _

Gillian stopped reading. She got the idea she'd blocked out the image of the body under that sheet. She could remember it in words - burned, raw, mottled, inhuman - but the picture was lost to her. All she could remember of it was the single patch of intact skin, sharply pale against the charred milieu, right below the collarbone on the left shoulder. Blank. Ashen as death, but blank.

It was six years after she'd met him that she first saw that tattoo. Four years after she'd started to drive over to Martin's Tavern in Georgetown. Once a year, every year.

This particular night had been a bad one. He'd been slumped at the usual booth in the far corner, nursing a whiskey on the rocks. Marty had nodded familiarly from behind the bar when she walked in the door, and she'd given him a half-smile over her shoulder.

''Lo, Foster.' Cal had said as she slid into the booth, without a greeting smile. He'd taken a drag on his cigarette. Gillian had kept up the no-nonsense guise she'd adopted for these occasions, making a face and waving the smoke away with one hand.

'I thought you quit those disgusting things.'

'Did.'

'Then what's that in your hand?'

'She told me she liked the way I looked. When I smoked.'

Gillian had been caught off guard, her hand pausing mid-flap. She looked closely at him. He was withdrawn, his eyes not really focussed on anything, and he was talking a little differently than usual - his accent slightly thicker, but not exactly slurred. He was drunk, but not very.

He'd _meant_ to say that.

'When was that?'

'Ages ago. When we first met, practically. It was here.' He pointed at the table beneath his glass.

'At this table?'

He reached over to his left a bit and tapped the table roughly without even looking. Gillian squinted at a faded, shallow engraving, twisted her neck a little. C&Z, it said.

'Cal and Zoë.' She said. The image flashed through her mind: Cal with a cigarette and a glass, then as now, and Zoë with a slightly more delicate drink, probably, like a vodka with something, the two of them leaning over this particular spot of tabletop, watching as Cal's pocket knife scratched out the visage of something huge they were just beginning to comprehend.

'You did that the first night you met?'

Cal shook his head. Dropped his cigarette for a moment into the ashtray and downed the last of his drink. 'No. This was our place, though. The place we always came. Carved that on the first Valentine's Day.'

His lip twitched in the most fleeting of sneers. Contempt.

'Hello, miss, what can I getcha?' A chipper girl whose fitting top flattered a modest chest appeared out of nowhere, nearly making Gillian jump. Cal seemed to have heard her coming somehow, even though she'd popped up from behind him.

'She'll have a Rigori, and I'll have another.' He told the girl - Jenny, by the tag - and passed her his glass. Jenny nodded brightly, flashed something Gillian found utterly bemusing considering Cal's state, and vanished as quickly as she'd come.

Then again, a man with an accent and a cigarette who could hold his liqueur and still have the presence of mind to successfully guess exactly the drink his colleague was craving?

Not the right track. Not at all the right track. Cal was depressed, he was both drinking and smoking, and she was here to get him home before he got really plastered.

'You should stop now, Cal.'

Cal looked at her without any expression whatsoever. Except - wait - oh. Gillian looked away. She'd been about to give him the riot act. But the look on his face… not yet.

'Why do you keep coming, Gill?' He asked after a while. His voice was sad and tired. 'Four years now, and you always show up.'

'To pick you up when Marty takes your keys.' She said evenly, tracing a pock in the table.

'Liar?' She looked up at the tone in his voice, like a question, like a plea. For a second she just stared at him, stunned. He'd never talked like this. Never looked at her like that, practically begging, as quietly as he could, for something to grab onto before he went flying over a waterfall. Never. Was he drunker than she'd thought?

'Oh, Cal.' She sighed. He'd forgotten his cigarette; it rested against the rim of its tray, ash slowly consuming the tobacco. Without thinking she took his hand and squeezed hard. 'I come because I hate seeing you like this. I hate not being able to do anything, so I come here and I sit across from you at this same damn booth so that at least I can be near you while you drown.'

An hour later they'd left the bar together. Gill drove; they'd pick up his car sometime in the distant future. Cal had fumbled with his house keys for a solid minute while Gill waited patiently, and finally got them in. She'd taken him by the elbow so he wouldn't fall up the stairs, swaying dangerously as he was on a flat surface, and guided him up.

She'd felt it when he'd tensed, and let go so he could crash on his own into the bathroom. She never went after him when he did that, because she knew instinctively that he wouldn't want her to. She got a blanket and a fresh washcloth from the linen closet, and only when she heard him stop did she go in. He was shivering; she draped the blanket over his now bare shoulders. He was sweating; she swabbed his forehead with the cloth.

'All right?' She asked. He got to his feet and allowed her to steer him into the bedroom. He collapsed on top of the covers and went to take off his shoes, but she pushed him back and did it herself. She cajoled him into shifting a bit so she could get the coverlet over him.

She saw the tattoo then. A small one, very simple: two little squares with a couple of adjoining lines on them.

How he realized she'd been looking, she never could fathom. 'First one.' He said.

'What?' She asked. He'd tapped his shoulder, right next to the tattoo. He closed his eyes.

'Studying sculpture at art school in London. Just wanted to know what it was like. So I went to a real little sweatbox in South London, in Peckham — place where the tourists don't go. Little cubicle in the back of the shop… and I got this. In my head, it was about the De Stijl movement and Constructivist art movement from Eastern Europe… but really all I wanted was to have something. Just something. Just wanted to know what it felt like.'

He trailed off then, mumbling and soon falling silent. Gillian had stood there for a moment in the half-dark, looking at him as he slept, before bending down to pull the blanket over his chest so he wouldn't catch cold.

_[Present day]_

'H'lo?' Loker picked up on the fourth ring, voice groggy and thick.

'Loker, meet me at -- at Starbucks in twenty minutes.' She'd been about to say "meet me at the office." But there was no office anymore.

'Doctor Foster? It's… one in the morning.'

'It's important, Eli. I think Cal's alive.'

A static pause while her words sank in. 'But we saw --'

'I know what we saw, Eli, but it wasn't him. Get dressed and drive like a maniac. Seventh and E, twenty minutes. I'll call Torres.'

'Boss, are you --'

'Starbucks. I'll see you there.'

She disconnected and dialled Torres.

'Torres.' She announced on the second ring. Gillian blinked, having expected a similar greeting to Loker's, but Ria seemed wide awake.

'Torres, I need you to meet me and Loker at the Starbucks on Seventh and E in twenty minutes.'

A split second of that same white noise, but only split. 'Okay. Seventh and E, twenty minutes.'

Gillian hung up, grabbed her keys and left. Her thoughts spun around wildly in her head as she drove. It was certain now that Cal wasn't dead - or at least, the body they found wasn't him. But that left so many new questions. Like why would someone want the world to think Cal was dead? And where was he, if not in the wreckage of the building? Was he even still alive?

Yes. _Yes_, God damn it, he was still alive. And she was going to find him. She could call some --

Gillian nearly swerved out of her lane.

It had worked the first time. Maybe they could beat the odds twice.

She pulled over in front of a little diner and killed the engine. And sat there. Her cell phone lay on the passenger seat where she'd tossed it. She didn't pick it up. She imagined picking it up, imagined flipping it open and dialling his number and letting it ring and hearing his voice, but she didn't.

She stared at it.

What if he didn't answer?

She imagined that too. Imagined it ringing, once, twice, thrice, quatrice. Imagined the little click that meant it had gone over to voice mail, heard his voice say, '_You've reached Cal Lightman, leave a message._' Imagined knowing he was really dead.

For a second she felt paralysed, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to blink. Her mind flashed back to the last time.

_'I'm… burned pretty bad.'_

_'I'll be fine, Gillian.' _

'_I love you --'_

And the scream. She'd never heard his voice contorted like that, twisted into something inhuman, a product of agony. Not Cal's voice, not him.

'_I love you --'_

She imagined him somewhere, in pain, alone.

'_-- Be with you while you drown.'_

She snatched up the phone before she was aware of what she was doing, punched in the familiar number with shaking hands and froze. The dial tone sounded, tinny and wavering in her ear.

Brrrrrrrn.

'_I love you --'_

Brrrrrrrrn.

'_I'll be fine, Gillian.'_

Brrrrrrrrn.

'_Call me if you need me, love.'_

Brrrrrrrrn.

'_You've reached Cal Lightman. Leave a --'_

'Hello?'

Gillian's heart hit the roof of her mouth before she realised it wasn't Cal. 'Who… who is this?' She tried to compose herself. 'Where's Cal?'

Static. _Fucking_ static.

'Oh, God… Ma'am, I… hate to be the one to tell you this, but Doctor Lightman is dead. I'm a forensic anthropologist. I'm studying the remains.'

No. No, that wasn't possible. Gillian's head spun. 'Why… why do you have his cell phone?'

'Ma'am, we only got the body yesterday… we haven't turned over his personal affects yet.'

No, she didn't believe it. This guy had to be lying. The tattoo. She _knew _about the tattoo. Gillian pushed.

'Ho-how did he die?'

'Don't… don't you know, ma'am? The caller ID says you're Doctor Foster. I read in the papers that you work with him…?'

'Gillian? She's my cousin, I'm using her phone… What happened to Cal?'

'Uh… he got burned, ma'am. That's what killed him.'

'Is there a tattoo on his left shoulder?'

'Ma'am --'

'Please.' Her voice must have been so hard it scared him.

'Okay. Uh, just hang on.'

She hung on, listening to the white noise.

'Yes, ma'am, there's a tattoo on his left shoulder. Two little boxes with lines or something. Ma'am I really can't give out any more information.'

Gillian barely heard him. What was going on? She'd seen the body. She'd seen it. She'd seen it. Hadn't she? Had she imagined it?

'Ma'am?'

'I…'

He was dead. He was really dead…

'GILLIAN! HE'S A BLOODY LUNATIC!"

She dropped the phone with a cry - 'Cal!' - and scrambled to pick it up again. 'Cal, can you hear me? Cal!' But the line was dead. Gillian shook the phone, slammed it shut, threw it. It cracked against the glass of the passenger window and she looked at it, spinning a little where it landed on the dash, for a very long time. Her breathing gradually calmed and her thoughts eventually slowed. Finally she was left staring out the windshield at the car parked in front of her. She thought about praying.

That had been Cal. She knew it. Every part of her knew it.

Cal was alive.

She turned the key in the ignition and pulled out into the traffic.

+-+-+

_[Four years ago]_

Cal was waiting by the doors. He stood with his arms crossed against the chill, taking everything in. The street still had that drowsy cool it only got in the mornings, still smelled incongruously of dew and earth. Traffic had already started up, though it was too sleepy still to offer up much blaring or screeching. Pedestrians power-walked, chatting or barking into Bluetooth sets, and MPDC employees streamed into the doors at his left. He watched them, some wearing uniforms and some not, nodding when one glanced his way but looking for one woman in particular… there.

'Detective.' He greeted.

'Doctor.' Grace Hallowell replied, stopping in her brisk tracks, surprised. 'Are you looking for Farish?' She was a good looking woman, well-dressed. But she wasn't wearing her detective face, her confident, authority figure face. Without it she was almost shy. Lightman could see why Ward liked her.

'No, no, I'm looking for you. Fancy a drink?'

Hallowell flashed confusion. 'Well, thanks, but I've got… you know, I've got work.'

'Not for another hour or so.' Cal pushed away from the wall and got in her space, establishing a link so that she couldn't walk away without being rude. It worked; her body turned toward him in little ways no one else would notice. Situations like this had always fascinated Cal - Hallowell clearly didn't want to talk to him, she'd been edging away not a minute ago, yet her subconscious had registered his move and automatically obeyed the laws of social behaviour.

But another time.

'I guess that's true.' She might be instinctively following the rules, but Cal was still seeing hesitation all over her pretty face… He thought about giving her date-me signals. She was too skittish, he was never going to get anything out of her this way. And he needed to know if he was right. This was big. But earning her trust would take far too long; time was of the essence. With the smallest of twinges, he laid into her. Right outside the station doors.

'Listen, Grace, I need to know what you were doing with Paolo Ricci last night.'

Shock. Incredulity, but not the innocent sort. Then anger. He spotted the moment her defence mechanisms cranked into gear: Hallowell's guard went up like a steel wall, and she put on her detective face. Cal watched the change in her posture, in the way she held her expression, in the energies behind it, and he marvelled internally. Her detective persona transfigured her completely. She'd become a bloody femme fatale.

She stepped forward, crackling angrily. Cal regarded her coolly and held his ground. There was no use in sending submissive signals at this point; he'd have to find an opening elsewhere. 'Listen, Doctor Lightman.' She said, voice low. The tips of their noses were virtually touching. 'I don't know who you think you are. I am an officer of the law, not a common criminal. You may think you know everything, you may think you're better than me and my people. But you will show me the respect I'm owed. Accuse me of trafficking again, and I promise you I will make your life hell.'

He almost didn't want to say it. It was way too elementary, too easy. Not to mention it would ruin this thing she had going; Christ, she was one of the best liars he'd ever met. Except.

'Detective,' he said, almost sadly, 'I never said anything about trafficking.'

Her reaction almost hurt to look at. He could almost feel the self-contempt -- _there's no _way_ I just did that, no way, I'm not that stupid, no _-- before she stamped it out violently. A second or two passed in silence. Cal gave her a moment to decide what to do.

In the back of his head he's already worked it out. He had thought that the guilt she flashed whenever Guy mentioned 'Paul' was because she was dating Paul but shagging Guy, or something similar. Now he got it; she felt guilt because she only told her partner that Ricci was her boyfriend to explain away the flowers. And the affection she'd displayed, arranging those flowers so theatrically the other day when she hadn't known she had a two-man audience, had seemed off because it was fake.

Grace Hallowell wasn't moonlighting. She was corrupt.

'Before you turn me in,' she said finally. She was oddly businesslike under the circumstances. 'I'm going to tell you I slept with him. Once. It didn't mean anything really, but he seems to trust me. If you turn me in and I miss our next… date… he'll ask questions. He'll find out I'm a cop. He'll get very, very pissed - at me, for betraying him, and at himself for letting himself get conned. Now let me ask you: are you willing to get me killed over a couple ounces of heroin?'

Cal weighed all the factors carefully, staring through her. If he were Paolo Ricci, how would he react? He was a Mafia underboss. Cal knew something of the Mafia's workings. Enough to know that if he really wanted to, Paolo had the resources to make anyone disappear at any time, without so much as breaking a sweat.

'You tell your partner?' He asked eventually. Grace crossed her arms over her chest. No. No, she hadn't. He studied her briefly and nodded.

'How about that coffee?' He asked.

_[Later that day]_

The sirens were different in the eye of the storm. Distant, muffled by the metal box they rode at speed. A tire jumped, rocking the three of them forward. Two officers, one scientist, all silent. Oppressively silent, but there was no time to balk, Cal had a job to do. He calculated fast, analysed the situation from the very beginning.

1, Hallowell was Ricci's dealer. 2, Ward knew nothing about it. 3, He, Hallowell and Ward were all three headed straight toward Ricci in a police car.

This was going to be bad.

They parked a block away from the little restaurant, behind the second cop car. When the doors were thrown open and men and woman poured out, Cal seized the opportunity provided by the exodus. Grabbing Hallowell's wrist, he turned her around and hissed. 'Don't be seen.' She glanced back at her colleagues as they spread out around the building, disoriented by the sudden change of gear. Her detective face was on, with a slight difference; less analytical and more determined. A soldier face. She nodded curtly.

'I'll take any runners on the left field.' She muttered into her headset. With a final look at Ward's shrinking back, she set off, leaving Cal by the cars.

His job was done, then. There was no more reason for his engagement; Cal allowed his faculties to drop a notch. He leaned against the van to watch.

The footmen were almost invisible in the night, creeping around the building to cover the back and side doors. Two took down the front door and vanished inside. Cal watched the scene intently, but for a moment nothing at all moved.

And then a solitary figure appeared out of nowhere, sprinting across the blacktop to his left. His eyes flicked to the point at which he'd last seen Hallowell, and sure enough she'd leapt out of the night and was giving chase. The two would intersect just feet from the park. If the runner took a chance look back and saw his pursuer, all he had to do was alter his trajectory by a degree and he would be gone. Cal watched with mild interest as the two black miniatures raced toward collision. Suddenly he squinted. Leaned forward.

There was no way. No, no, the chances were miniscule -- the pursued man flashed beneath a parking lot lamp, and it was certain. Cal burst into a sprint of his own, shouting after Hallowell. But too late. The scene changed so quickly he didn't catch it, except to hear the bark of a gun.

+-+-+

_[Present day]_

Loker and Torres were already waiting at Starbucks when she parked the car in the lot, standing outside the dark doors. It was closed. Gillian hadn't even thought of that.

'What is it?' Loker met her halfway to the café, his face a mess of emotions.

'Wait for Torres.' Gillian said calmly. They walked together.

Torres' face was composed, businesslike. There was even a little bit of happiness. Gillian got it: Ria had taken a huge personal leap for this company, rearranged her life to be part of it, and then it had gone crashing down around her ears and left her high and dry. After several days of brooding stagnation, even a call from the boss in the middle of the night was cause for a little smile.

'The body they found, it wasn't Cal.' Gillian said without preamble. Both of them flashed the same things: surprise, disbelief, comprehension, pity. Gillian curbed the urge to slap that off their faces; they were wasting time. Instead she let Torres ask the only question possible: 'Are you sure?'

'Absolutely. Cal has a tattoo on his left shoulder. A tattoo that wasn't on the body - I checked. I called Zoë --' She ignored Ria's flash of disapproval '-- and she confirms it.'

'The tattoo might have been somewhere else.' Loker said gently. 'It might have been… burned off.'

'I know where the tattoo was.' Gillian said rockily. 'Where it is. Zoë does too.'

'Zoë didn't see it.'

'It doesn't matter. I am five hundred percent certain that Cal Lightman is alive. There's nothing either of you can do to convince me otherwise, so please, don't try.'

'Why are we here, then?' Torres said.

'You're here to work. We need to pump every contact we have in every institution for information.'

The two of them looked at each other, and Gillian had to restrain herself again. 'Do you two understand?'

Loker took a breath. 'What are we looking for?'

'Enemies. I think someone kidnapped Cal.'

Surprise, disbelief. And this time, concern. For her. 'You think what?'

'I'm not going to say it again.' She felt her boss voice creeping in, her authority voice, her "listen to me, obey me, I'm in control" voice. 'I called his cell phone again. He didn't answer, but another man did.' She abridged the exchange for them, ending with Cal's crucial howl.

Neither of them knew what to make of that. Gillian gave them exactly two and a half seconds to let it sink in, and took over before they had a chance to formulate any arguments or questions. 'Now. I need you both to contact everyone we've got -- reporters, officials, cops, everyone. I want you to find out who planted that bomb, because I'm guessing that they're the ones who took him. Understand?'

Loker nodded speechlessly, looking like he was still trying to catch up. Torres was studying Gillian's face.

'Good.' Gillian said. 'Start as soon as we leave.'

'What are you going to do?' Torres asked.

'The same thing as you. Go.'

+-+-+

Cal screamed. He hadn't known he had another one in him, but even in its current state his body still had the capacity to react. He panted and coughed.

Guy wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving red streaks. His face was still contorted with anger, but not like the fury of just seconds ago. 'That was really stupid, Lightman. Really fucking stupid. You're just asking to die, aren't you?'

The ceiling seemed to swirl. Cal watched, fascinated. It was like the concrete was insubstantial, like it was liquid. How was it staying up there? Shouldn't it be falling? The sky is falling, the sky is falling, big blue shards like glass tumbling out of the sky. The ceiling should be falling if it's liquid. Maybe there's some counter-gravity holding it there, a force-field, witchcraft.

'Lightman!' Guy snarled. It was an effort to focus on him, even when he grabbed the damp front of Cal's shirt and shook him. 'You want to die, fucker? You listening? Do you?'

Cal shook his head. Guy had blue eyes. Not a bright blue, not a nice blue like Gillian's, they were a dead blue. A murky, zombie blue.

He had a chant murmuring in the back of his head. The same words repeating over and over, like a mantra, but he had no idea what they were. They were gibberish. Code for something. Code for what? Gillian. He wanted Gillian. His rock, his best friend, his lover. Was she his lover? She should be. His Gillian. That was the word for her, yes, lover. She was saying the words, chanting those words in the back of his head, what was she saying? What was she trying to tell him?

'All right.' Guy's voice seemed to echo, and Cal lost bits of it, like a CD with a scratch. He heard Guy's boots thudding, walking away. 'All right, Cal Lightman, I'll give you what you want.'

He lost time. A few minutes drifted out of his grasp. He was looking at the liquid ceiling, only it was gaseous now because he could see through it. He was looking at Gillian. She had one of those orange slushies, she had her thumb in her mouth and one hand waving frantically. 'Brain freeze!' She laughed around her thumb. 'Brain freeze, aiiieee, brain freeze.' And then she was holding him at arms' length, looking at him seriously. She was saying those words again, the gibberish chant, and then she smiled. 'Roulette.' She said, and that made no sense either.

He came back. Guy was throwing water on him, greasy, oily water that stung his open wounds. Cal spluttered when Guy splashed it on his face and dumped it over his head.

'Is this good enough for you, Cal?' Guy asked, tossing the empty can away. Can? Can? Petrol. The water was petrol. 'Is this a good enough death?'

Something broke in Cal. His body and mind withdrew from each other with a snap like a rubber band, and for the first time in ages he felt nothing. Everything had gone clear as crystal, bright and defined as never before. He could _smell_ the cold of the warehouse, he could see individual threads in Guy's bloodstained jeans. He could see the glassy texture of the lighter.

He watched, silent and still and utterly there, as Guy pulled a cigarette from a pack and lit it up. Cal thought nothing. Felt nothing. Watched. The lighter clinked metallically. Guy pulled on the cigarette and the end lit into orange embers in the half light. Snapped the lighter closed and slid it into a back pocket.

Neither moved. Neither breathed. Cal saw nothing on Guy's face, read absolutely nothing. And he knew.

Guy pulled the cigarette from his lip and exhaled. He hung his hand at his side. Cal watched his eyes.

'Will you make your peace with God, Cal Lightman?' Guy asked. His voice was like a priest's, and for an instant Cal pictured it: Guy in clerical black and collar, giving the dying man his last rites. Dying man. Cal said nothing. He thought of Gill. The slushie, the smile, the pink dress, the downward glance, the paperback romance, the twitch of the lip, the voice. The calm voice that matched her eyes, hypnotic and serene, the voice that soothed him just by sounding. Gillian, Gillian. Lover. Should-have-been lover.

'No last words?' Guy asked. His voice was hard, jarring after the memory of hers. Cal's eyes had wandered from Guy's. He looked back now.

Gillian, lover. Never-was lover. Cal closed his eyes and rested his chin against his chest, almost like going to sleep. Lowered himself back into the madness where he'd had Gillian. Found her voice again, chanting there, in the mist.

And then he knew what it meant. Smiling, he said it with her.

'אבי , סלח להם , משום שהם אינם יודעים מה הם עושים.'

Guy gasped, staggering back as though physically assaulted. Numb fingers dropped the cigarette. Cal's world erupted.

+-+-+

**I know this is going to get asked, so yes, that's Hebrew, and no, I'm not going to tell you what it means, because that would ruin everything. I'll translate in the next chap. **

**Reviews fuel my muse -- any takers?**


	4. The Hunt for Truth

**Right, again with the hiatus, this time due to technical difficulties, for which I apologise profusely. Thank you for sticking it through. Here is your fourth chap.**

**Standard disclaimers, etc.**

**~ W**

_[Washington Post, Wednesday, morning edition]_

_THE HUNT FOR TRUTH_

_Investigative forces have discovered the perpetrator of the Lightman bombing a week ago, and upon further enquiry have unearthed that Guy Ward is not a terrorist, but in fact a former client of the Lightman Group. Three years ago, the Group was hired by local law enforcement to determine whether a key witness in an undisclosed case was cooperating fully with the police. Further into the case, Guy Ward and his team were ambushed by an unknown party, and his partner was killed. The link between her death and the Lightman Group's findings is presently unknown._

_Though Ward has been found out, police have been unable to make the arrest; Ward, insiders report, is missing in action. 'We suspect he's left DC, possibly even the country.' Says one informant, 'We've uncovered evidence in his place of residence that substantiates premeditation; when we do catch him, he's in for it.'_

_While investigators continue the hunt, the Lightman Group tends to its wounds. The three survivors, Ria Torres, Andrew Black and Christopher Dudek, are in recovery. The families and friends of the three casualties, Martin Phelps, Eden Roy and Cal Lightman, mourn. Law enforcement assures them swift justice._

'Guy Ward.' Gillian said when Torres finished reading. Her heart was pounding. Were her ears ringing? Or was that just her? Guy Ward. She remembered him. She and Cal had taken the case together, or it started out that way. In the middle of the investigation he'd begun telling her to stay behind, she had loads more important things to do, this one was easy, he already had it figured out. She hadn't even noticed when the little changes started cropping up -- he was right, she really was bogged down with work -- didn't realise he was behaving oddly until it was way too late. Not until she got the call from the hospital, saying he'd been shot.

But she remembered Ward. She hadn't liked him. He seemed a good enough guy, but she could tell the cop didn't like Cal. And besides, he had looked at her, Gillian, despite his lady friend, that other cop Hallowell. His partner.

Cal had never told her Hallowell died. He never talked about the case at all, ever again.

'When is this supposed to be printed?' She asked.

'Tomorrow morning.'

'Tell them to hold it. We can't let him know we're onto him.'

'They don't even think he's in the country.'

'I know. Just in case. Pull strings, Rea, we can't afford to risk it.'

'Okay.'

'Thank you. I'll call Eli. Once you've done all you can about the story, see what you can do about finding Ward.'

_**Cal, senior year at university**_

'Richie, where's all your stuff?' Cal paused in the door of the dorm they shared, blinking. 'I can actually see the walls in here, it's fuckin' eerie.'

Richie stood up from the desk, apparently in the middle of writing a letter. The notebook and pen were the only objects still not carried out to some waiting van to be carted off to New York. He glanced once between Cal and the notebook before the edges of his brown eyes crinkled in a minute grimace.

'I was hoping you wouldn't be back before nine.' Cal frowned at his roommate. Richie looked odd. It was the hair. He'd tamed it out of the John Oates hedge it usually bore, greased it back, making his brow stand out more and his eyes more serious. And then there were the clothes. No Dukes of Hazzard t-shirt or blue jeans. Instead he sported clean, pressed black slacks and a dark red Oxford, complete with silver watch and a couple of rings.

'Scratch.' Cal commented sombrely. He leaned against the doorframe, not really keen on entering a room where his were the only belongings, and said, 'you're going back.'

'I have to, Cal. Uncle Gino died.'

Cal inhaled sharply. Richie had invited him to dinner just the other week, with the entire clan. Gino had been real wizard, with a shitload of stories and a laugh gravely from decades of smoking. He'd taken Cal aside in the little hall between the kitchen and the dining room, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

'I hear a lotta good things about you, Cal. Seems like you're the best friend my nephew's got, and that means a lot to this family. You're a good kid, Cal. Take care of him.'

_Take care of him. _It was like a movie, an action flick where the best friend's dad takes the hero aside and charges him to protect and avenge.

Cal had loved the old, portly man instantly.

'I'm sorry.' He said quietly. Richie nodded, expression blank. He looked down at his shoes, new ones, shiny black.

'I'm glad I caught you, though.' Cal continued. He shrugged, half smiling when his roommate looked up again. 'This way I can tell you to your face, you bloody Tinkerbilly, that I'll personally kick your ass if you don't write.'

Richie returned his sad grin.

_Three years ago_

Paolo!' Cal roared when Hallowell crumpled. He shouldn't have shouted, not when Ricci had just shot someone else, but it was instinctive. Ricci's reaction was instinctive also. The second shot seemed quieter than the first, but only because the eruption of fire in his shoulder rather overshadowed it. Cal stumbled with a grunt, his momentum nearly carrying him into the concrete. He took an instant to reorient himself, panting and gasping.

Don't kill her, Richie.' he wheezed, bent double. 'She's a woman - killing women's against your rules, isn't it?' He heard Ricci breathing almost as hard as him, heard his shoes scuff a little as he moved furtively.

'How did you get involved with _this bitch_, Cal.' Stiff, furious, defensive. Predator turned prey.

'Police hired me to interrogate Donato.' Cal straightened a little, pressing against a spot over the wound to keep the flow down. Ricci's face bore so many emotions it was hard to distinguish them all, but his gun arm was steady. It pointed unwaveringly at Hallowell's prone form.

'And you did?' Voice like rock. Gun steady. Poised. Crouched.

'Course.' Cal said.

'Then why the message?'

'We're friends. You and me. Had to warn you.'

'And _her_?'

'Dirty cop. That's all.' _Don't kill the dirty cop, Richie, don't. Just a dirty cop, plenty of those, not something worth murdering…_

'She lied to me.' For a split second the rage eclipsed all the rest, and Ricci's trigger finger twitched. Cal let out a wordless noise in an attempt to give him pause. It worked; Ricci jerked at the unexpected noise. Cal capitalized on the split second he'd won.

'She's a woman.' He said, would-be calm. 'You can't kill her, the Family'll punish you for sure.'

'But -' _There, he could use that --_

'Listen to me, Richie. Get out of here. Run. If the cops nab the wrong guy, one that'll talk, Donato's going to prison. Your Family will need an acting boss. Leave the girl. I'll take care of her.'

Ricci was torn. Half of him was outraged, bloodthirsty, betrayed. Another part of him wanted to listen to Cal, listen to his old friend, trust his old friend, and still another demanded escape, survival, was hunting desperately for an out. In the end, whether it was loyalty or self-preservation that won out, Ricci ran. Cal watched vigilantly until he disappeared into the night, and then sank to the ground.

He checked Hallowell first. Unconscious, blood everywhere, pulse thready. But breathing. Pupils responded. The shot had gone right through her, right through the heart, Cal was stunned she was still alive.

Too late, help swarmed around them. Cal was carried away from Hallowell's prone body. Hands fluttered around him, touching, retreating, pressing and prodding. He started to drift.

Ward's face. Enraged. 'What the _fuck_ happened, Lightman?'

'Runner. Saw us coming.' Cal said, staring up at the black sky. Ward swore.

'Us? Us? You stupid son of a bitch, you got her killed!'

He got a good punch in before a couple of medics restrained him, dragged him off. Cal spat blood.

'Told him not to kill her.' He muttered. 'She won't die.'

And he knew nothing.

_Present, location unknown_

'Guy, NO!'

He lunged, but too late; the picture froze in his mind before his feet carried him to the pyre: the ravenous flames spreading out away from the cigarette, up Lightman's legs, Lightman's face contorted in a silent scream, eyes wide open --

Dallas didn't remember snatching the blanket from his brother's armchair, didn't remember sprinting. He was just there, abruptly, half of him paralysed with horror as something more primal took over. His hands beat at the inferno with the blanket, striking a writhing human body. Dallas's own skin was beginning to burn from the exposure, a flame or two licking at his hands, but he couldn't stop seeing Lightman's face, jaw stretched in that terrible soundless roar, pupils dilated to nothing. Later he would see that face again, only with detail he couldn't grasp at the time. Later he would see the skin peeling, swelling, cracking. Later he would wake in cold sweats in the middle of the night, screaming, having dreamed of that face.

When the blaze was finally extinguished Dallas didn't pause. He flipped his switchblade open and hacked the ropes in two, just the wrists -- the binding at Lightman's ankles had been singed off already. He put his hands under the injured man's arms and lifted him out of the chair. Cal let out a gargled sort of cry as his back connected with the cold concrete, his eyes wild. He was still smoking. Dallas fought a gag, focussing hard on cutting open the shirt to get it away from the burns, assess the damage.

The trauma was extensive. Burns to the left region of the neck and chest, less severe where clothes had protected the flesh before Dallas was able to get to him, but all second and third degree. He would guess -- forty percent of the body -- needed water, needed to flood it --

'Doesn't hurt anymore.' Dallas jerked back in disbelief. Lightman had his eyes open again, though one of them was burnt. Dallas saw that eternal moment again; the hazel eyes wide with pain and fear, open to any damage the fire deigned appropriate; but Lightman must have closed them at some point, because the one that was affected wasn't too bad. Bad enough, but not too bad.

'What' Dallas asked, mind still operating on an assess-heal-save level.

'Doesn't hurt. Why not?'

Dallas knew the answer to that. Because there were no nerve endings left to feel pain. How the fuck was this guy alive?

'Decker's telling us he's got two calls about possible gunshots down at 665 Taylor St, and another about suspicious persons at the same location. I cross-referenced the descriptions, and one fits Guy Ward. The other matches his brother Dallas.'

'How long have they been there?' Gillian demanded.

'The first call was made three days after the office got bombed; the informant said he'd been seeing the same two guys hanging around outside the warehouse for the past few days, coming out periodically and smoking cigarettes, sometimes together, sometimes just the one guy. He said it didn't look like they'd ever actually left.'

'That's them, that's got to be them.' Gillian was already out the door, leaving it wide open in her haste to get to the parking lot. Her ears were ringing again, but this time it was distant. A flood of emotion was being quelled by Action. She needed to get to Cal. All else could follow. 'Call Decker back and tell him to dispatch a team _now_.'

'But what if --'

'Now, Torres!' Gillian snapped the phone shut and threw it onto the passenger seat, pulling out onto the street with a squeal of burning rubber. They were close, they had a location now, Cal would be there, Cal would be safe. She would get him back safe.

She got to the warehouse in the wake of three or four police teams. Aside from the police activity the place seemed abandoned. There were no outward signs of the horrors that were supposed to be going on inside, no blood pouring from the walls, no thunderclaps echoing ominously overhead. It was just a warehouse, vacant, innocent, in broad daylight. For a second Gillian faltered. Cal's life was at stake. Had her gut instinct been wrong? If this turned out to be the wrong place, would there be enough time to try again?

No. He had to be here. She had to believe that.

She stood by the car as the teams split up and surrounded the building, watched as the ones at the closest door pounded on it and shouted, 'Police, open up!' As at the ruin of the Lightman Building, she was the only one standing still, with no help to give except to bear witness. But that was all right. It would be okay, Cal was in there and they were going to get him out.

Cal

'Don't call the police!' For the first time in a while, Guy's voice was cold with authority, actually making Dallas's hand falter in dialling. But the pause lasted only a moment; he pressed the last 1 and held the cell to his ear, staring his older brother down. Guy stepped forward to slap it away, and Dallas dealt him a fist to the gut. All the air whooshed out of Guy as he doubled over, looking stunned. And then pissed.

'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' He snapped, gasping, 'You want to save him? You want to save that fucking demon?'

'Demon?' Dallas bit off, so angry by now that he could barely pronounce the words. 'You want to pull the Bible shit again? All right. I'll play. What did he say?'

Guy seemed to be trying to forget. Face twisted, he leapt up again and struck the phone out of Dallas's fist. He heard a tiny voice answering before the plastic made contact with concrete several metres off. Dallas didn't try for it. Instead he hit Guy again.

'What did he say, Guy?' He repeated as his brother staggered, lost his balance and fell backward onto the floor. 'Huh? You heard him. "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." You're the Jesus-maniac, you're the one who threw the Bible at him like acid at a murderer, you know what it means. By your own fucked-up logic, _you just lit the Messiah on fucking fire!"_

'He's not,' Guy stuttered, scrabbling back like a crab as Dallas advanced, 'he can't be, he killed --'

'Shut up, you lunatic!' Dallas roared. 'He didn't kill her! You're the demon, Guy Ward, playing God like this for eleven fucking days, torturing a man who's been trying to repent, who's been saving lives and championing the truth since before you even met him! God help me, I stood here with you and watched it happen, and I'm going to Hell for that, but you, _brother, _are the demon. Now give me your cell phone. This man is dying and I'm calling an ambulance.'

That was when he heard the banging. Muffled voices, shouting, authoritative. Dallas froze for an instant. Then he relaxed.

'The police are here, Guy.' He said, not looking at the maniac on the floor. 'It's over.'

'POLICE, DROP YOUR WEAPON!'

Weapon? The bark of a gun, and Dallas knew nothing.

**Well, obviously it's not over yet. Keep reading!**

**Reviews fuel my muse -- any takers?**


	5. Moment of Truth

**Another wait, for which I apologise. Again. But I compensate with long chapter. Thanks for the reviews, and all the favourites. Enjoy.**

**Standard disclaimers, etc**

**~W**

CHAPTER FIVE

_MOMENT OF TRUTH_

_Everything DC knew about the outcome of the Lightman tragedy has proved false. Administrator Dr. Cal Lightman, whose body was purportedly identified amongst the dead, has in fact spent the past eleven days with the man previously suspected to be the engineer of the bombing, Guy Ward. A former badge with the MPDC, Guy Ward __harboured__ a grudge against the co-founder of the Lightman Group because of Dr. Lightman's role in Ward's late partner's death, the details of which are still shrouded in mystery._

_It is certain now that Ward was the engineer of the lethal explosion, but after further investigations by the remaining co-founder, Gillian Foster, and the MPDC, it was discovered that the criminal had not left the country or even the city; instead, he holed up in the warehousing district__ with Dr Lightman as a hostage, intent on cruel and fatal punishment for imagined crimes._

_The MPDC say that Ward, already slightly unbalanced, attached blame to Lightman when his partner, Grace Hallowell, died in the line of duty four years ago. Only recently had he begun to meditate on actual revenge, composing a complex stratagem to abduct Lightman, placing six bombs around the weakest structural points of the Lightman Building when the least number of innocents would be at work. The crux of his plan was to have an associate pose as a client and set off a fire alarm as a diversion. While the employees evacuated and security were searching for a fire, Ward's associate planted false identification on a cadaver already placed in the basement to buy time with his victim. Once his associate was out of range, Ward blew up the building with two ends in mind: first, to give Lightman a legit reason for going missing, and second, to make it more difficult to identify the planted body as someone other than Lightman. Investigations are underway on the morticians who identified it as such despite the intransigent law requiring them to ascertain assumed identity with DNA._

_Dr Foster, convinced that the body uncovered was not her business partner, conducted a private search for Lightman. While this decision might have been perceived as the stage of grieving known as denial, it ended up saving Cal Lightman's life; he was admitted to Sibley Memorial Hospital in critical condition, having sustained grave injuries from his assailant. He fights for his life as DC reels at Ward's incredible malevolence and at the incredible truth exposed._

Gillian hovered beside the gurney, jostling against the paramedic at Cal's head, not yet grasping the terrible reality of his injuries, the stains of fluid already seeping through the gauze, none of it. His eyes were open, and they were looking at her, and they were alive. She grabbed his hand.

There were no complications en route to the hospital. He didn't flatline or stop breathing or seize. He just lay there looking at her while the medics hustled in the periphery, still as death, and she could do nothing but stare back in terror. The ride was a ten, twenty-minute eternity. Several times she imagined the light had gone out of those eyes. It paralysed her every time, and even when she realised she'd only imagined it there was no succour in the knowledge.

Only once did his eyes close. When that happened Gillian hit the roof, screeching his name like a banshee until one of the medics was forced to leave Cal and rein her in. As soon as she noticed she was keeping the woman from helping Cal, she locked her jaw and watched him fixedly, willing him silently to open his eyes, open them, come on, Cal, _open your eyes. _He never did. She thought vaguely of looking to the medics, listening to whatever it was they were saying, because surely that was the smart thing. She never did. She couldn't force herself to look away, for fear that if she blinked, he would slip away.

She scrambled out of the ambulance and ran beside the gurney with her fingers glued to his. Down the white hall, between patients and staff and family members, the acrid cocktail of formaldehydes and floor cleaners and human excrement routing her nose, watching and watching and watching Cal's eyes. She could hear herself talking to him, saying insipid comfort-the-suffering comments, but even she wasn't paying any attention. She couldn't think of the words that would tell him what she wanted him to hear.

The door closed on her. Stunned, she stared at it, not really aware of the exact moment she'd been cut out. She stared through glare of the glass at the retreating shape of the gurney and its attendants, unable to watch Cal's eyes anymore to keep him from dying.

She thought of the words then.

'I love you, too.'

Several minutes later, while she was still staring through the motionless doors that led to OR, a small force of nature crashed into her from behind. She managed to worm around within Emily's vice grip and returned the embrace with equal intensity.

'He's alive, Emily,' she said into the girl's shoulder, to relieve Emily's terrible quiet, 'he's in surgery, we got there in time. He's going to be all right.'

She could feel Emily's silent nod, but the gesture was undermined by her fingers, which clenched harder around fistfuls of Gillian's shirt, and by the tremors. Gillian shook with her, certain for a moment that Emily was crying like the five-year-old Daddy's girl she'd once been, calling out in the crystalline voice of innocence for her father.

Dallas, drifting in and out of consciousness, looked through the flashing lights and the howling sirens at the second gurney. He couldn't see the dying man except for the vague outline. What he did see were several silhouettes all around Lightman, medics and one civilian. In the brief glimpse he caught before the convoy disappeared into the ambulance, he realised the civilian was a woman, and that she was bent over Lightman like a lover, one hand cinched with his in a dead man's grip. Her voice carried to him through the chaos and the fog that was beginning to gather at the corners of his eyes. One word. A name. The syllable was a song.

The doors shut on Cal Lightman and the woman, and then on Dallas too. He closed his eyes to the pure white light and closed himself to the world.

He knew there was one more ambulance in the parking lot of the warehouse, but while he could hear the sirens from both his and Lightman's, overlapping like ripples on a still sea through the night, there was no third wail of urgent grief. His brother was dead. Dallas was an only child.

And worse than that, he thought that maybe that was as it should be.

_Saturday_

'Well, Doctor Lightman, you're a very lucky man.' The white-coated blur told Cal. There was a smear of skin, too, the colour of black coffee, and a glint that might have been a pair of glasses.

Cal couldn't tell; he seemed to be bloody near blind. He heard with perfect clarity, though, the shuffling his attendant made with the folder, and the metronome _bip... bip... bip_ of whatever machines were attached to various of Cal's limbs. Like a leech. A big, tentacle-ridden leech.

Lucky. Yeah, he'd heard that so many times in the past hours that the meaning of the sodding word had been bludgeoned out of it. 'What's wrong with my eyes?'

'That's your IV.' The doc answered promptly, which made up a bit for the "lucky" comment. 'A side effect of the morphine, should go away once we take you off the cocktail.'

'How long's that?'

The doctor exhaled through his teeth and seemed to talk to himself as he shuffled his papers some more: '40% skin loss, healing fine... projected scarring relatively minor... range of motion seriously reduced... but treatable... then there's the trauma not caused by the fire... several lacerations ... lethal blood loss, working on that... one puncture, bullet removed...'

Several seconds of this. Cal hadn't really listened to his list of injuries until now. He'd been very out of it, being on enough painkillers to topple a horse. But now he did. Bleeding hell, maybe he was lucky.

No. He needed to find a new word for lucky. Anything but lucky. Fortunate? Er, no. Blessed? Gag. Fluky? Oh, he liked that one. Fluky. Sounded funny in his head. He said it out loud.

'Sorry?'

'Fluky.' Cal replied. 'Not lucky.'

'Yes.' Doctor Holland paused, unable to help a small smile. He'd heard things about Cal Lightman; apparently none of them was true when the formidable man was high on morphine. 'Well, you're going to be here a while, Cal. Get comfortable.'

Emily and Zoe came to visit him. He didn't catch their arrival; one minute they weren't there, and he must have dozed off, because the next minute they were. Somebody was crying. Cal recognized the sound instantly as his daughters and opened his eyes.

'Oi, who's making all that noise?' He said, affecting a cranky growl. Which wasn't that hard with a throat the texture of sandpaper. He still couldn't see Emily very well, but as soon as he spoke he could sort of feel her hands fluttering over him, looking for a safe place to touch. She was hiccupping hard between sobs- his throat clenched and he reached up toward her blur of white and gold and brown. Bandages constricted against his skin, but he didn't notice; Emily burrowed into his arms and clung to her. 'I'm all right, Em, it's all right. Stop that, love, it's all right.'

Looking up over his daughter's shoulder he could make out the shape of his ex-wife, her hand pressed to her lips, shaking silently.

_Three weeks later: April 4_

'Thinking I might have to break up with Ward.' Cal said thoughtfully. 'Bad luck, he is. Always seem to take a bullet or two around him.'

'I'm never letting you out of my sight again.' Gillian told him. Her throat was still scratchy from the crying she'd been doing for the past decade.

'Nor I you; _you _seem to be _good _luck.' He was being dry, or ironic, or whatever it was stupid British _gits _did for humour. But Gillian could see it in the sidelong glances he gave her, however casual he attempted to make them. Dressings covered half his chest, for Christ's sake, and all of one leg and half the other and God knew where the hell else. Dressings covering a healing wound, but dressings just the same. And he was giving _her _that look.

Three weeks he'd been here. His room kept changing as his condition went from emergency to critical to serious, but she'd followed along in the wake of his gurney, then his wheelchair. That first night had been the worst of her life, and that was rather an accomplishment, staring at an immovable metal door waiting to be saved from her agonising. And when they'd finally allowed visitors, the visitors had to be family, and Gillian was left alone with the tyrant doors once more. A twenty-five-hour eternity. Plenty of time to think in a twenty-five-hour eternity, although she hadn't done much of that. Mostly she'd remembered and conjured up several different versions of the moment a doctor came out of those doors again:

'He's in a coma,'

'He's going to be just fine,'

'He's gone.'

She'd thought of them all. And somewhere in between, her turmoil had boiled down to one need: see him. Ask him. Understand. Move on. Four parts of the same basic drive.

'You lied to me.' She said now, sitting at his bedside with her eyes on the hand she was stroking absently with her thumb. Even it showed signs of the awful events, dry and almost sunburnt. 'On the phone.'

'Yeah.' He said. She glanced at his face. His eyes were closed now, his complexion pallid from blood loss and lower eyelids shadowy. Better than before, but still bad. She shouldn't bring this up now. Yet after everything she'd been through the past two weeks… she needed everything to stop spinning and go back to normal. And for that to happen, she needed to know why it had been knocked off kilter in the first place.

'Cal, please?' She pushed quietly, crossing the line. He raised his head and looked at her, and she knew he'd registered it.

'Walking the high wire.' He explained finally. ' Didn't want… couldn't drag you in.'

Gillian stared at him, her gut clenching in some unfathomable emotion she recognized - had felt before, in similar circumstances - but could never explain. 'Oh, Cal.' She said. 'You stupid, stupid bastard.'

She didn't try to tell him off. That was the way Cal had always been. From the beginning he'd been the one swanning off into the crossfire, leaving behind the people he loved because he had this warped, idiotic idea that their lives were worth more than his.

'I thought you were dead, Cal.' She told the pillow, and closed her eyes as she relived that shock, that disbelief, that despair, standing there with Eli and Rea in the wreckage of their second home and staring at a mangled hand that had slipped out from beneath a funeral shroud. 'We all thought you were dead. What would we have done? Cal? Mourn you and cry and move on while you got the shit tortured out of you in some warehouse off Emerald Street? _While you died_?'

She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep herself from saying something that would send her over the edge. She was sick of crying, she'd already cried so much she thought she might dry out like an autumn leaf with one more stupid tear, she wanted to go home. Home: the way things had been before, before all this gut-wrenching palaver and death and not-death and near-death.

Cal squeezed her hand. She looked at him again. His face was unguarded, displaying everything: sadness, guilt, regret. But she knew he didn't regret what he'd done. She knew he'd do it again.

'No, Cal.' She said. 'It has to stop this time. Next time something happens, swear you'll let me help you. Swear.'

Cal dropped his attention to their hands, clasped tightly. Gillian saw it in his face before he said anything, and grabbed. 'You tell me no right now and I swear to God, Cal. I deserve a fucking yes.'

Cal's eyebrows went up when she cursed. Yeah, she was that god-damned serious. He spoke before she could grab again.

'Lesser of two evils.' He said firmly. 'I'd do it again. And again, and again, you understand?'

'Well I wouldn't.' She practically shouted. 'You know I'll never walk out on you, Cal, God knows I'm not even capable of walking out, but one more crisis like this and I think it might kill me. You know what it does to me, Cal? When you do something like this? Do you have any idea what I go through? No, you don't, or you wouldn't do it. You - walk your high wire - so I don't have to, or so you say, but that can't be it, because if it was about me then you'd see that every time you clamber on up there and leave me craning my neck and wringing my hands and just waiting for you to fall and not being able to do a god-damned thing, it kills me.'

He didn't need this. Why was she saying this, what was she doing? But she couldn't stop now; her words were running into each other in their haste to get out.

'It kills me, Cal, a little bit every time. But you don't see that, so no, it's not about me, it's about you. You and your adventure, you and your drama, you and your sainthood. Saint Cal, who shoves everyone away so he can be the hero, Saint Cal who says he does it for them but really just wants a soliloquy, Saint Cal who can't even see somebody's in l-'

She stopped, choking back the rest of her mad rampage. Unable to look him in the eye after that, she bolted up to run. Cal grabbed her wrist.

'Get off.' She snapped, breaking out of his grip. When she started running she heard the machine send up a ruckus as Cal snatched off all his little wires and scrambled up.

'Get back in the bed, Cal.' She barked, whirling around to face him, and when he tried to take her wrist again she wrenched her wrist away. 'No. Get back in the bed.' Something had faded in her voice; even to her it sounded flat and dead.

'No, don't _fucking_ do that, Gill.' He said, grabbing her wrist and this time not letting go. 'Don't put up your walls on me, not now, be mad at me. Rage at me, hit me if you like -'

'Get back in the bed, Cal.'

'You get back in the bleedin' bed! Come on, you're mad at me. What were you saying? Saint Cal, eh, pissing on his friends, high and mighty Cal, blind Cal, stupid Cal, son of a bitch Cal, come on Gil, what were you saying -' He went on, gripping her wrist like a vice and using it to back her into a wall, snarling at her, unrelenting. Gillian struggled to hold on to the ice fortress she'd pulled up in herself, but he was hounding her, cornering her, giving her no outs, and at last she splintered.

'_Get off me!_' She yelled, shoving him with her free hand and shaking the other madly in an attempt to free it. She focussed on this as her throat threw out the rest of her pent-up emotion, rage and fear and relief, focussed on shaking him off like a dog as she shouted insults and called him names. Focussed enough that she didn't really notice it when she started to sink to the floor, or when she started to cry again, but that was the way she found herself: on her knees on the floor, clutching Cal like the only rock in a raging river, her face buried in his shoulder.

'All right,' Cal said, running his fingers through her hair over and over, 'all right, Gill, there it is. Be done with it.'

'I'm sorry, Cal, I didn't mean any of those things.' She told his bandaged chest. 'I didn't mean them.'

'No, love, of course not.'

'I just… I hate it when you don't trust me to help you, or to see you when you're vulnerable. I just wish you'd let me in, even… even if only to be with you when you're drowning.'

'I know. I can see it, when I leave. It's just - better me than you. Eh? If I'd told you where I really was, I don't know what Ward would have done, and I couldn't risk it, not with you. I just couldn't do it, I never could, I'm not strong enough. I'm sorry.'

She pulled back to look him in the eye, put her hand on his cheek. She felt spent; she couldn't think what to say anymore. Suddenly she remembered. 'Oh, God. Cal, get back in the bed.'

'Well, I'm already up now -'

'_I said get back in the bed!_'

_May 15_

'I can't believe she blew up on him like that.' Rea said, perched on the kitchen counter with a look of delighted surprise.

'I can.' Eli put in, pulling his head out of the fridge where he'd been hunting for food. 'I mean, think of the week she'd just had. She had all this destructive emotion pent up from not expressing it because she's the boss, she's got to stand in for him and everything. So she blew. Like a soda bottle that's been shaken up a lot but the cap screwed on real tight.'

'There was a lull, there. Close to the end.' Rea recalled, looking out the window as though watching the scene. 'I don't get -'

'She tried to put her cap on.' Eli interrupted, surfacing with a cheese stick and a ham sandwich. 'Cal took it off and shook her up again.'

'Which wasn't that smart. She ripped out a couple of his stitches.'

Eli made a face like, "what can you do?" and unwrapped his sandwich. Peered between the bread and frowned, put it down and dug in the fridge again for mustard.

'Think it'll ever be the same again?'

'What, the Group? Probably not. New building, for starters, and they'll probably have to lay some guys off to pay for the move. Good thing I don't get paid.'

'I mean between them. I mean, you know, how it was.'

Eli paused in squirting his mustard to look at her, and then through the kitchen door, through which they could hear Gillian talking indistinctly. He tilted his head and thought about it. 'No. I don't think so. They crossed their line in a big way, and I think now they won't be able to go back. Everything will be different now.'

Rea nodded thoughtfully and Eli stuck the mustard back in the fridge. There was an old picture of Lightman and Emily stuck on by a magnet, Emily grinning and giving Lightman bunny ears. Lightman didn't look the same as he did at work, didn't look like the boss in that picture. He was smiling, for one thing, a smile Eli had never seen for himself and doubted he ever would, especially now. It felt like he was looking at something private.

'Hey.' He said. 'Think he'll mind I took his sandwich?'

'He'll have to get used to it if we're going to be working out of his kitchen.'

Gillian descended the stairs, struggling to keep her grip on an overflowing folder, and caught sight of Cal standing in the doorway. She sighed with relief. 'There you are, I thought you might like to look through some of these -' She realised he wasn't paying any attention to her and followed his gaze. He was looking into the kitchen, where Rea and Eli were talking easily. Cal's back was to her, but the set of his shoulders, the way he leaned against the doorframe. She sighed.

He was always doing that now. Standing on thresholds in his own house, hovering like some unwanted vampire. She didn't know what to do. He'd healed up very well, all things considered, and attended physical therapy sessions twice a week. Those things he seemed to be taking well. And anything related to work. All business. Sharp as ever. When addressed, he was perfectly amiable, or at least as much as he'd ever been. But he didn't talk much, and he smiled even less. There was the cane. There were the scars. She would have to let him be, at least for now. Baby steps.

_June_

At first she didn't know what had woken her, and she rolled over, blinking blearily, to see him not asleep beside her but slumped before the armoire.

'Cal?'

He didn't move. In the early morning gloom she could just see the shining reflections of his eyes flick to her mirror double. She couldn't see well enough to gage an expression. She had the horrible feeling that there was none. His voice, at least, was hollow when he spoke. 'Go back to sleep, love.'

She didn't go back to sleep. Instead she slid out from under the slate grey duvet and rounded the bed to stand beside him. He didn't say anything. She didn't say anything either. Entwining one hand in his, she extended her other to turn on the floor lamp.

Cal winced, stepped instinctively back from his reflection. Even in the lenient light his scars gleamed like plastic all across his chest in a loose diagonal ending at his gonial angle, warped and textured as human skin was not meant to be textured. Quickly, he reached over and snapped the light off again.

'At least in the dark,' he managed past a tight throat, 'I can't see it.'

She ignored his strangled protest when she put out her hand again. The gentle light flooded the room once more. Aware that Cal had closed his eyes against the sight of the two of them, she studied his body mercilessly. Neck. The small patch of pink, shiny tissue where there should have been five-o'clock shadow, right by his ear. Chest. Patterns in the blight. No chest hair anymore. Abdomen not so bad; he'd been hunched over when Ward set him on fire, not allowing the flames access. Gillian's eyes stung at the image her mind conjured, but she kept all pity and sympathy out of her expression. She knew Cal was watching her now, incredibly vulnerable.

Without meeting his pleading gaze in the mirror, she stepped back and scrutinised his back, stone-faced. The muscles of his shoulders were tense with emotion. She studied every plane and dip with the same brutal focus. Shoulder blades. The small of his back. Her eyes were hard, assessing him as coldly as a slave-driver would have done. When she felt she'd absorbed every infinitesimal facet of his changed countenance, she returned to his side and faced him. When he uncertainly mirrored her action, she let him search her eyes for pity, revulsion, grief. Then she told him with absolute frankness, 'You're beautiful.'

Cal walked with a cane now, due to constrictive scarring at the left knee. When asked he said he sure as hell did plan on getting it fixed surgically. One of his eyes had changed colour - it was almost translucent now, as though it were indeed a window to his soul. The doctors had no concrete explanation for this, and attributed it to trauma. The scar left by the fire stretched above his collar even when he wore an Oxford, covering the left half of his neck all the way up to what the doctors called his mandibular gonial angle. Or in English, the bottommost edge of his jaw, way back by his ear. The discolouration was otherwise invisible as long as he avoided shorts. Which he did for a while despite the summer weather, a behaviour that hurt Gillian to observe.

She intended, with time, to coax the penchant out of him.

Cal had always bounced back, more or less. He had the habit of brooding - their annual visits to Marty's Tavern, for example - but he always came through without leaning much on those around him. It was his way, walking the high wire alone, and in the past she'd allowed it. But this time she would be more than his rock. This time she refused to watch him drown.

_July 4_

They had a new building. Not as centrally located, more toward the fringes of centre city, but not bad. They had new stuff too: computers and high-tech lab and interrogation gadgetry and enough paperclips to build a slightly smaller Eiffel Tower. Surprisingly, a lot of the funding for this had come through donations. A lot of people had followed the story in the Washington Post. In their letters, which they paper clipped to their endowments, many of them praised Gillian for her fortitude in the search for her business partner. Still more extolled Cal's decision to carry on with the Group despite what he'd been through.

A few even asked why they weren't married.

The four of them were celebrating in the largest office. Cal's desk hadn't been moved in yet, so the remnants of their banquet of Thai take-out ("terrible patriots, you lot.") was spread out on a tablecloth on the floor. The first bottle of bubbly was long gone, and they worked their way leisurely through the second, sprawled out and looking over the cityscape.

'Nice view, anyway,' Loker commented, nodding down at the Technicolor stars liberally dusting the black night.

'_My_ nice view.' Cal corrected. Torres rolled her eyes. Cal's lip twitched as he took another drought of champagne. He lay languidly with his hands twined behind his head, the cane some yards away. Gillian watched him. He seemed okay. But she knew something was off. Cal Lightman was a very good actor, but she was an even better critic. Quietly, she got up and left the office.

The new place was pretty good. It smelled like paint and cleaner at the moment, but the windows in the hall took up everything above about waist height on the left, allowing a panoramic view of the city, and the Expressions collage would take up residence all along the right. Gillian ignored everything en route to her own office.

There was no furniture here either, yet. It had a view even better than Cal's, to make up for the slightly smaller size; she could see the Lincoln Memorial some distance off, the great American facing her and deceptively small. He might have been life-sized, from here, lit up like that in the dark. She thought of the words that surrounded him, protective walls of Idea that were more impenetrable than the rock on which they were engraved:

"_Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the __cause__ of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other."_

Gillian wondered if Cal had prayed, those months ago, tied to a chair and riddled with holes. She didn't know. He'd never talked about it, beyond the testimony to the authorities. Just the skeleton tale: Ward had been with the MPDC when they hired him to help bust a kingpin; Ward's partner died, and Ward blamed Cal; Ward blew up the building to hold up the search, planted a body toward the same end; Ward tortured Cal; Cal tortured Ward back, psychologically; Gillian saved Cal.

He never elaborated on the things Ward had done to him. But he didn't have to. They had left their marks on him, on all of him. Gillian's throat clenched and her eyes stung and she couldn't move whenever the thought occurred to her: he'd suffered. A lot.

She tried not to let the thought occur to her. After several seconds of staring at Abraham Lincoln in his temple of words, Gillian turned her back.

Cal came in quietly. The lights were off, but the cityscape cast his features in a gentle glow.

He had lost weight, being 'under the weather' so long. But he'd gained a little of it back again, over the past few weeks, and his face, so long gaunt and pale, had livened up once more. Only his eyes hinted now that anything at all had happened to him. His eyes and the scars peeking out from under his collar. He leaned on the cane casually, as though it had become part of him, as though it no longer repulsed him to depend on it.

But Gillian was a better critic.

She would have to tread carefully. There were only a precious few ways she could do this.

'Things have changed.' She said finally. 'Between us.'

Cal looked at her, understanding perfectly.

'After… _that_… we crossed a line. And I don't regret it. But I need… you still have walls, Cal. You're still acting a part, even with me. And I don't love the person you're playing. I need you to let me touch you.'

He said nothing. He looked down at his cane, rubbed the head absently with a thumb. She knew he wouldn't open his mouth until she'd said absolutely everything, and so she ploughed directly into it, forgetting her deliberate approach.

'Obviously we've been sleeping together for a while,' she started, 'which is huge and different and confusing as hell, and we haven't said a word about it, just like we haven't talked about what happened to you in that warehouse. And we need to. If this is going to work – or at least, if you want it to work as much as me, whatever it is – you have to let me in. We have to be able to talk. You have to trust me.'

When it had all poured out, Cal just continued to look at her. Then, without so much as a nod or a blink, he acceded. He told her about the case, four years ago, about the particular intimacy between Ward and his partner, about Hallowell's death and what Cal surmised Ward had gone through because of it. He told her about the abduction and the delivery, briefly, of his wounds. Hesitantly, but because he knew she would ask anyway, he told her why he screamed at the end of that first phone call.

Gillian listened silently, giving her attention to him so completely that her eyes closed so that nothing distracted her from his voice. Until he said that about the scream, she hadn't exactly connected the event to the man standing in front of her. It was like he was talking about someone else from a long time ago. But then she remembered the scream itself, and the two realities snapped together.

And then she remembered _'I love you.'_

He told her about manipulating the Ward brothers into thinking he was worse off than he felt, and how that involved acting. And, hesitating again, he said that the 'I love you' was part of the act.

+++

**Reviews fuel my muse - any takers?**


	6. Truth's Champion Lives

**A million thanks, once again, to Sidney James TD Lemon 1900 (Sorry, Sid, couldn't help changing it a little; maybe the story didn't need what I tacked on, but I did x] ) and to all of you who stuck it out every time I took decades to update. Good things come to those who wait; here's your final chapter.**

**Standard disclaimers, etc.**

**- W**

_Gillian_

She remembered the first time. She'd followed him to Marty's Tavern, like she'd done forever now, and stood in the door of the place looking for him. Marty had given the customary nod and gestured with his scruffy jaw at the usual table. Cal was sitting there, elbows up on the scarred table, hands clutching a glass. She'd stared at him with an unfathomable grief. His shoulders were slumped, just as they'd been that very first time and every time thereafter, eyes unreadable. And the cane, leaning against the table. The scars weren't visible from here, from this angle or this distance, but they were there. The cane told her so, as if she needed reminding.

For the first time since she'd started coming here, Gillian took a table alone and just watched him. She felt useless. She'd never been able to help him, not really, with the memory of Zoë and what his life should have been like. Now that there was Ward, and that damned cane, she knew she could do even less.

'What can I getcha, miss?' A chipper waitress asked. For a second, lost in the past, Gillian had thought it was Jenny. But no. This was 2010, and Jenny hadn't worked here for years. This one's name tag told her 'Christen.'

_'She'll have a Rigori, and I'll have another.'_

'Nothing, thanks.' Gillian said around the knot in her throat. 'Wait - that man in the corner there? Bring him a Rigori for me.'

'Sure thing. Who from?'

'The lady across the room.'

Gillian watched Cal as Christen vanished behind the bar with her order. He didn't move. He wasn't smoking this time, and the whiskey hadn't been touched. His hair was getting in his eyes.

She wasn't sure why she'd told the waitress to take him a Rigori. Was it because that particular cocktail had become her trademark on these meetings? A tip-off that she was here? Why had she done that?

Maybe because it might be time now, after years of her going to him, for Cal to come to her.

Christen carried the drink, under Gillian's watchful gaze, to Cal's table. He looked up without smiling, and his eyebrows drew together as she placed the drink on the table. Though she was too far away, Gillian could hear her telling him what it was and who it was from, and even, she swore, the light _thuk _the glass made against the wood of the tabletop. As Christen peacocked off to take care of her other tables Cal's eyes swept the room once before alighting on Gillian. She kept her face blank, meeting his gaze for a split second before turning away. She gave him the option of not coming over.

There were marks on this table too, right beneath her folded hands. One polished nail touched a faded _C_, and when she moved a little she could distinguish an _&_ and a _G_. C&G. She smiled ironically and moved her hands away completely.

He slid into the booth across from her, placing the Rigori on the table with the same _thuk _she'd imagined minutes ago. She heard his breath rush out of him, smelled his cologne. He'd told her once it was called 212, something he'd found by chance while shopping with Emily in some boutique somewhere. She liked it. It complemented his natural _eau d'homme. _

'Believe that's yours.' He told her, meaning the Rigori. She looked at him and said nothing. He just looked back. His left eye still hadn't regained its former hue; she'd begun to think his stare would be mismatched forever now, half no colour and half all. The scars peeked over the collar of his black Oxford, buttoned uncharacteristically all the way. Without thinking she reached over and undid the first two buttons, hating the sight. The skin of his collarbone shone white and textured in the half light.

He flashed pain and reached up to pull the shirt together, but she caught his hand and held it centimetres away. He was stiff with the effort of not resisting. She was so glad he'd come over.

'Why are you here, Cal?'

She thought he might give her the same answer he'd been feeding her for years, the one that had no meaning, but tonight he looked at her and told her with his eyes that he wasn't going to dance.

'I don't know.'

'_You're wasting your time,' _she wanted to tell him. _'Wishing. It's not going to come back, What you had. What you should have had. The future is all you've got.' _She didn't. He wasn't smoking. He knew.

'I'll take you home.'

His keys were in his pockets. He was altogether sober, but he let her drive him to his place and guide him up the stairs. Emily was asleep, the door to her bedroom closed. It still pained Cal to bend his knee past a certain degree, and he held in a grunt the whole way up. Both for Emily and herself, Gillian knew.

She eased him into bed, pulling off his socks and shoes and unbuttoning his shirt and tugging it off his shoulders. The shoes she placed at the foot of the bed, the socks and shirt she folded neatly and placed on the chair because his chute was in the bathroom. When she was done Cal had worked the covers over himself, but only up to his waist. The tattoo, intact, stared up at her from his chest. She pulled it up to his chin, like he was a child, and before thinking she reached out a hand to stroke his cheek. He caught her wrist and whispered into the dark, his tone even but the words so vulnerable they broke her heart: 'stay with me?'

She had. It felt like home, like wishing. Like an old house that used to be hers, except someone else had moved in and now she was just a stranger standing on the threshold of a place she remembered, had loved, now longed for. Not hers. But home all the same.

_Cal_

Cal and Zoë had agreed without speaking that it would be best for Emily to stay at her mum's while Cal healed. It was just as well; Gillian stayed on nearly every day, and in the mornings he caught her looking at him with a haunted expression. He also noticed that he was waking up with a dry, raw throat, and put the two together: he'd started talking in his sleep. Or screaming. He didn't know which. It was best that Emily didn't witness either.

But she wouldn't stay away indefinitely. The first night she came home was only a month after the hospital discharged him, and he spent the entire evening lying to her. They watched a movie, a stupid musical romance type thing, and Cal had to pretend to be insulted by it, making loud comments in the middle of dramatic numbers and, once or twice, blowing a raspberry when somebody started snogging. It was worth it; by the end of the film Em was laughing with indignation and calling him a jerk. Convinced he was back to normal, or at the very least allowing herself to believe. Then, when she went to bed, he'd stayed where he was the whole night, staring at the menu screen in silent agony.

Gillian had come to him that night, like an empath in some fairy tale, letting herself in and gliding through the dark house to sit beside him on the sofa and gather him to her. They stayed that way the rest of the night, until she fell asleep in his arms and he fell into the trance that had largely replaced sleep. She'd been warm and soft against his chest, real and breathing, and he'd abandoned himself to that feeling.

He wasn't sure exactly when he'd given up altogether. Not sure of the exact moment the acting had become automatic, or when he stopped smiling even to pretend.

Work. Dinner for Emily if she was here. Upstairs, get lost. Bed. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Point?

And then there had been the fourth of July.

'What does that mean, Cal?' She said. Her voice was even. The windows of her office were open, airing out the smells of cleaner and paint. A night breeze whispered in now, touching first her and then Cal. He said nothing.

'Tell me the truth, Cal.'

'I don't know what the truth is.'

'The truth is what hurts to say out loud.'

_What hurts? _What hurt was that he really did love her, loved her with every mauled fibre in him. What hurt was that he wasn't completely sure he was human anymore, what hurt was that he didn't have the energy to seek out truth or follow love or deal with people - any people. Torres or Loker or Zoë or… Emily. Oh, Emily.

Didn't have the energy. Everything he'd worked for, everything he'd touched, had all brought him to that warehouse with the Ward brothers. That was all it had earned him. And that had fucking well killed him. What was the point?

That was what hurt. He couldn't dredge up the will to give it to her.

Alternative? If he told her, _it was just an act, Gill, it wasn't real, I didn't mean a word of it? _That would hurt too. Because that would hurt her. And even as he was now… how could he do it, even for her own good?

After all, he knew the sort of lover he'd been for the past few months. Unresponsive, uncommunicative, walled off. And he knew, he knew, god damn it, that even that hurt her. Any way he stepped, he broke her, damn it, damn her. He couldn't handle this.

'Help me, Gillian.' He didn't hear himself say it until the words were already hanging, bloated, in the air between them.

She looked at him. The cool summer breeze toyed again with her hair, conspiring with the city lights that haloed her to give her all the presence of some avenging goddess. Cal clenched his jaw, recoiling as he realised what he'd said, and turned to flee.

_Gillian_

She didn't let him go, obviously. Instead she lunged forward and grabbed his arm, spinning him around. He stumbled, his bad leg a little to slow to catch his weight, and his fist reflexively grabbed a handful of her coat to keep him from falling, but she showed no pity. 'Say it.' She demanded. 'Say what hurts.'

'It all hurts. None of it hurts.' He told her, eyes wide with fear as he struggled to get his leg under him. With one hand she seized his waist to steady him and his jaw with the other, forcing him to look her in the eye. What was she doing? She didn't know. She did it anyway.

'Say it anyway.'

'I… I… no.'

'Then I'll tell you.' And she proceeded to pelt him with every piece of his soul she'd read and understood over the past several months, every lie and every painted smile. Her heart pounded wildly as she did - what if she was wrong, what if she'd read him wrong, what if this sent him over the edge whatifwhatifwhatif - but she didn't stop until she had no more bullets to fire: 'You know I love you, Cal, and you love me in return, more than you care to admit, and what would hurt the most to say is that you don't think you're strong enough anymore for that. You could have told me it was just an act, but you knew that would hurt me, and thank you for that, Cal. Thank you, but _snap the hell out of it.'_

He'd fought her like a caged animal, at first, but by the end he'd gone completely still, until the only thing distinguishing him from a wax mannequin was his breath beneath her clenched fist. He stared at her like an inmate in an asylum, eyes vacant and unresponsive, but she knew him. She knew he was listening to every word. She knew she was reaching him. And with that last, when she shook him and his head juddered back and forth like some sick bobble-head, his arms went up to her shoulders and he shook her right back.

'You snap the hell out of it.' He barked, looking almost angry. 'Of course I bloody love you! But what am I supposed to do, Gillian? There's no point! _I don't care enough!'_

Before she knew what she was doing she had wrenched out of his grip and shoved him backward to keep him busy a moment while she darted across the room and mounted the windowsill. The summer breeze, gentle from inside, assaulted her like a brick wall at the same time the cityscape, three hundred feet below, appeared to rush up to greet her. Adrenaline spiked as she gripped the window's edge, crystallising the view to Technicolor perfect. She imagined her pupils had dilated to pinpoints. Ow. That was interesting.

It took all of thirty seconds to get up here. By the time she noted the panoramic view, Cal's arms were around her legs, pulling her roughly back in. Lincoln, a study in white, was the last thing she saw before tumbling back into her office and landing on top of Cal. Her ears were ringing; belatedly, she realised he'd shouted. Loudly. Gillian rolled off him and put a hand to his face. He was livid, but breathing hard and unable to get out much more than a few wordless noises of fury. She couldn't help smiling. 'You care enough.' She patted his cheek before letting herself collapse on the rough carpet beside him. 'You care enough.'

They lay there for a few seconds, panting as if they'd run for their lives, saying nothing. Finally Cal managed a pair of words: 'Sodding _owwwwwwww.'_

Gillian burst out laughing.

_Cal; July eighth_

Richie came to see the new building one night after everyone else had gone. He was looking slightly exasperated; Cal deduced that he'd had to strong-arm a couple of goons into waiting by the car. The lanky Italian still managed to glide in like a shadow; Cal's lip twitched in amusement.

'Hello, Richie.' He'd been expecting a visit.

'Hello, Lucci.' The shadow observed him from the doorway of his office, only his face visible in the cast-off glow from the city below. Cal watched his eye travel over him, feet up irreverently on the desk, Oxford open to the third button down, exposing shiny damage, his face flippantly scruffy. The cane, leaning on the desk within easy reach.

'I hear you spent some time with an old friend of ours, Lucci.'

'Oh, yeah. Several months ago, now, though. Getting a bit slow with age, mate?' But Cal knew why it had taken Paolo so long.

Paolo let the comment slide, striding into the room and folding his long legs into one of the comfortable chairs opposite Cal. He put up his Armani boots too, the long, expensively clad mirror of his old university friend. 'I wanted to kill him.'

'No need. He's dead already.'

'The brother?'

'Don't touch him.'

'You don't pity him.'

'Yeah, I do. Imagine being in his place.'

'I'd rather not.'

'Exactly.'

'How did you escape?'

'Told him I didn't have anything to do with the mafia.' Richie blinked, absorbing this, and then threw back his head and laughed. He had a deep-throated laugh now. Almost sinister.

'Oh, not all that _long_, anyway,' Richie chuckled eventually, 'only since you roomed with an underboss at college.'

'I made him think I was Jesus.'

'You - wait, what?'

'He was obsessed. I quoted the bible at him till he thought I was God.'

'Well, that - Christ, I suppose you'd call _that _a long con. How the hell did you manage that? My best guys wouldn't have been able to keep up the lie that long. You sure you don't want to be my consigliere?'

'Fuck off, Richie.'

'Yeah, I know. You're not even Italian anyway.' He didn't voice the other thing. He knew Cal was aware of it, and that was enough.

'You've got a family now.'

'In so many words. An ex-wife, and a daughter I'd die for.'

'Emily.'

'She's got Zoë's eyes.'

'Only the colour. The rest seems to be yours.'

'Nah. She's not got my conker.'

'Thank God for small favours.'

Cal liked talking about his girl with Paolo. It wasn't new, him knowing everything about Cal's life. He kept tabs. It was like having a guardian angel, or a fairy godfather.

All right, not a fairy godfather.

'And then there's Signorina Foster.'

'Yeah. And then there's her.' Cal's vague smile faded. He glanced at the cane.

'Why do you look at your cane when you hear her name?' Paolo asked.

'Fuck off, Richie.'

'Not this time, Lucci. It was my fault. You can't keep me from doing what I can.'

'It wasn't your fault, you great pillock. How were you supposed to know she died?'

'You're deflecting.'

'Yeah, I bloody well am.'

'Do you love her?'

Cal glowered. 'We're blokes. Blokes aren't meant to talk like this.'

'Only British ones. Italians get it all out. Do you love her?'

'Yeah. Yeah, I do.'

'Then forget the cane.'

'How do I walk, then?'

'Cal.'

'Like to see you do it.'

'Cal.'

The scientist smashed a fist onto the desk without warning. Ricci regarded him calmly as Cal struggled to contain his sudden anger, every plane of his body hard with the effort.

'Four days ago you didn't think you had the strength to face the world again,' Ricci said, his smooth tenor calming, like a balm. 'You thought you couldn't feel terror; you did. You thought you couldn't feel devotion; you did. Tonight you thought you couldn't feel fury; you do. You're healing, and you know it.'

'Not enough.' Cal bit off. 'It's not enough. She had to jump out of the fucking window -'

'That's a lie.'

'Yeah? What's the truth?'

'Stop holding back, Lucci. You've never held back.'

'No, and look where it got me.'

'You're holding back now, and look what it's doing to you.'

'What, you want me to sock you?'

'I could take you.'

'Fuck off, Richie.'

Ricci smiled and stood. 'Sure, gimpy. Don't hurt yourself.' He turned his back, making for the door. 'Gimpy' came up behind him like a force of nature and jerked him around, pulling him into a fierce embrace. Surprised, Ricci was a moment in returning the gesture. Cal clapped him on the back before letting go.

'Now get out of my building before I call my dogs on you, Scarface. I got a girl to catch.'

'Yeah, yeah. Oh,' Richie opened his designer messenger bag. 'before I forget, I brought you a present.'

Cal took the gift, frowning at the change of pace. It was a thin, black leather bound book, with the words _Truth's Champion _embossed in silver on the cover. He opened it. Inside were five articles from the Washington Post, smoothly cut and laminated. _Truth Hurts; Truth's Champion Dead; Truth and Terror; the Hunt for Truth; Moment of Truth. _

'Figures.' He snorted, flipping through the pages, 'Not a word for eight years, and suddenly they're all over me with catchy titles.'

The last page was different. He squinted at it, reading the title: _Truth's Champion Lives. _The rest of the page was blank, though it too was newspaper. He understood immediately. This was the blank page of the rest of his life, to be filled with new deeds and truths where no words would have filled it had his life ended in that warehouse off Emerald. Truth's champion lives.

Cal looked up at Richie, who smiled.

'Go see about that girl.'

**END**

**Reviews fuel my muse - any takers?**

**Reviews fuel my muse - any takers?**


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